The Watchers

If you’ve ever wondered who — if anyone — keeps watch over the Memphis Safe Task Force, the answer is Vecindarios 901.

The Spanish word means “neighborhoods,” but in this context it really relates to the people who live in the city’s neighborhoods.

The volunteers with Vecindarios 901 are trained to know their rights as observers. They are trained to know the rights of those neighbors who might be targeted by the Task Force. There are lots of these volunteers. And they talk to each other.  

When someone sees a heavy police presence somewhere, a call goes out, almost like police dispatch. Available volunteers take these calls, arrive on the scene, witness Task Force members in the field, and often record their actions.

Sometimes the volunteers act as advocates, stepping in to ask questions about the stop or arrest. Sometimes they’ll even help those arrested make arrangements for their cars. (Read on to find out why this is so important.)

Vecindarios 901 watches the front line of Donald Trump’s assault on violent criminals and, often as not, nonviolent immigrants.

I spoke to several members who agreed to share their stories, unfiltered. We agreed to give them as much anonymity as they wished. That’s only fair if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can wear masks, we thought.

As I heard these stories, it became apparent that these watchers did not need a reporter’s help to tell them. So, I stayed out of the way as much as I could.

These stories have been lightly cut and condensed for space, only when absolutely necessary. The stories you are about to read have been read and approved by the people who experienced them. — Toby Sells 

CELIA

My husband and I rolled up on a situation. We didn’t know what was happening, but there were a lot of officers.

We drove up and several officers walked toward us and took photographs of us, walked around to the back of our car, and took photographs of our license plate.

They talked to us through the car saying we needed to leave the area and that we better get our priorities straight. They threatened us when we hadn’t even gotten out of the car.

Memphis Flyer: How did that make you feel, and what did y’all do?

Celia: It was really scary. It had happened to my husband before. I hadn’t experienced it. It made my heart beat very fast. I felt threatened. They were carrying weapons and my husband and I … we do not own weapons.

We were saying we’re just watching and that’s not against the law. Almost always, when we say it’s not against the law to observe, the officers say back, “We know.” So, there is an understanding that they know it’s not illegal to watch what they’re doing.

How do the Task Force members interact with people they target during these stops?

I have seen both. Officers will act in a very pleasant and congenial way. I have also seen the exact opposite. They’ve been very brusque, short-tempered, and angry. I’ve seen both from the same individual in one stop. They can be patient and kind and speak respectfully, and then in the next instant be brusque, shout, be rude, and physical.

What should people who have not seen what you’ve seen understand about this?

Just that we are all observers at this moment in time and that we all have the responsibility to stand up for our good, hardworking friends and neighbors who are being violently harassed and detained every day in our city without due process.

MIKHAILA

I learned very quickly that the Memphis Safe Task Force does not like to be observed.

I responded to a call last November in Southeast Memphis. I started recording as I was walking up because I could already see several federal agents going in and out of an apartment. They had a young Latino man handcuffed outside the building. As I stood there recording, they led a young Latina woman down the stairs as well.

I had only been watching for a few minutes when a [U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, D.E.A.] agent took notice of me. She took out her phone, tapped something on the screen, and pointed the camera toward me. She was recording me.

The First Amendment protects the right to observe and record law enforcement officers performing their duties in public spaces. When federal agents react by filming back, that’s retaliatory. It’s a violation of our constitutional rights. It felt like an attempt to intimidate me, when I was just standing there, peacefully observing.

Memphis Flyer: That had to make you feel scared.

Mikhaila: I did feel scared. I was certainly intimidated. This person is armed, in tactical gear, and they are now recording me. But I continued to record the interaction, and eventually she lost interest in me.

MP

This horrific story still haunts me to this day. It happened in June and I was first on the scene. It was in a neighborhood, kind of off Macon near where I grew up. It was the first time I’d ever seen [Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE] break a passenger’s window.

It looked like the things you see in Minneapolis today. There were six or eight cars. I’d never seen that many before. The guys were whisked away within minutes of them breaking the window. Nobody would identify themselves. I was filming the whole time. It was violent. They really manhandled the [targeted individuals].

Within five minutes, the entirety of the story became completely made known to me because they were like six houses down from one of the [targeted individuals’] homes. They were literally driving to work. Two kids — a teen and maybe like a 4- or 6-year-old — were standing outside barefoot on the sidewalk and witnessed the whole thing:  their dad being taken away.

Memphis Flyer: Any others?

MP: Another time they allowed a woman to call her husband and leave the keys [to her car after they took her away]. So, there I am, just a middle-aged white woman waiting with another responder that had this woman’s car keys. The husband — somebody from his work drove him in — we’re looking at each other human to human, and he as a dad said, “Oh my God, what am I gonna tell my kids?” It was heart-wrenching.

LOUISE

The worst one I saw was a mom pulled over with her 5-year-old in the car. Another child was at school. The dad was out of town. Another volunteer and I thought she was going to be okay and that we would just help get her car home.

Then an ICE van showed up. They took the mom and the 5-year-old. The child was bawling. The mom was bawling.

I asked what would happen to the child at school, and the ICE driver said they would work it out. The other volunteer and I took the car home. I don’t know what happened after that.

Earlier that month, an [U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, HSI] officer I spoke with told me, “Just know that some of us agree with you.” He explained what his job usually is — long-term investigations, working with the FBI, child endangerment. He said this is not what they typically do. I got the sense he was trying to get [another man] released, but he said his chain of command wouldn’t let him.

He was riding with a female HSI officer, and I will never forget her expression. She said, “We were not told we were going to have to do this.”

LESLIE

There was the night that a young man got pulled over for tinted windows.

By the time I got there, the entire block was full of law enforcement vehicles. So I parked a ways away and went down there. He had been tased. He had been beaten.

They ended up searching his vehicle, of course, saying that the straws — like the drinking straws you get from Sonic or whatever — were drug paraphernalia and that he resisted and they took him in.

The strength of force and the inter-agency responses feel so excessive. So it’ll be [Memphis Police Department, MPD] and three to 10 unmarked vehicles with officers from all of the alphabet agencies, right? Or, it’ll be a state trooper and a slew of unmarked officers. It’s really the number of agents that are making these so-called traffic stops … it’s overwhelming. It’s overwhelming for me, and I’m not the one being stopped. It’s just intimidation.

Memphis Flyer: What should people who have not witnessed any of this stuff understand about the situation?

Leslie: People aren’t being treated with dignity and humanity. And regardless of whether you think the individuals have a right to be here or not — as a country, we’ve always prided ourselves on treating humans with dignity and due process, and those things are no longer happening.

KARIN

I was in Hickory Hill area and I saw a state trooper pull a car over. I saw the car did absolutely nothing wrong. So I immediately pulled over and stopped, too.

I could see that there was an unmarked car following the trooper. By the time I parked and got out of my car, the two HSI [officers] were already on the Hispanic man who was driving this little white sedan.

I said, I just saw you pull him over and I didn’t see anything wrong. Why did you stop him? He said his headlights weren’t on. I said, this is 11:15 in the morning. He said, well, it’s raining. And I said, it’s not raining now. He said, well, it’s the law.

I said you would never have pulled me over for that — a white lady. That’s ridiculous. He just stood there.

The lady who worked in the Cricket phone store recognized the guy as one of her customers and she spoke Spanish. So, she came out and was filming a bit, too. They took him out of the car and handcuffed him.

It was so powerful to me how wrong it was. It was like 100 percent, no-gray-area, totally wrong. I actually started to cry. I didn’t know what to do.

I started to cry and I looked at the HSI guy and I said, ‘This is so wrong. This is not the United States of America.’ I said to him, ‘Please show your humanity.’ That’s just what came out of my mouth. I was horrified.

They actually did not impound his car. They, ultimately, let the Cricket lady take his keys and hold them. The man did not want a family member to come pick up his car while all the officers were there because he was afraid for their safety.

KB

I think one of the first stops I was at, it was down by the Rainbow Inn in North Memphis. I had pulled up to a call and they were talking to a Hispanic guy in a car with tinted windows.

They had a U.S. Marshal there who was translating, and me and few other responders were there just kind of watching and figuring out what to do. Eventually, they were like, ‘All right, call your family’ and had him call somebody to come pick up his car.

They put him in the back of the trooper vehicle. I had never seen somebody get detained like that before. It was painful to know that this person’s about to be ripped away from his family all over tinted windows.

A friend of a family member came and picked up his vehicle and then the convoy of vehicles drove off. But then they looped back onto Jackson.

We saw another vehicle come down. They pulled that vehicle over and pulled it over at the same spot — another car with Hispanic occupants and tinted windows. They never took out a tint gun or anything like that to actually check to make sure that the stop was justified.

They took the driver out of the car and search him pretty invasively in front of everybody. Then, another officer searched him again with his shirt pulled all the way up. They eventually let the passenger drive the vehicle.

They put the original driver in the backseat of the car with the other guy they had just picked up. It was like just in the span of 15 minutes, I saw two people have their lives ruined over tinted windows.

At one point, one of the HSI agents who had a mask on found the time to crack jokes and laugh with the state trooper.

CR

I sit [at an immigration monitoring site] with a friend once a month. I’ve been there twice when ICE came to the back door and took people away. I don’t know their stories. I didn’t get close. There was a quiet nervousness inside the waiting room. I went to the back in my car and watched from my rear car window. I did not engage with ICE or disrupt their operation. I watched as they led six men and a woman out the back door with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. It was very tense because I had a friend inside who’s waiting and I’m watching ICE take these people away.

What do you do? It still worries me that somebody’s going to take her out the back door. 

SEAN

There was a call. It was on a Sunday. It was at an apartment complex. When I arrived, there was another observer from V901 who was already there.

The story was that they had come looking for a person that they had a warrant for. They had broken down the door of the apartment. This guy was hiding in there and there were two other people.

The guy they got was a Hispanic man. He was already apprehended. He was sitting in one of cop vehicles when I arrived. But the other two people — both were women. One who I assumed was the mother of a girl who looked to me to be a minor.

We were trying to find out what was going on. They wouldn’t let us get real close to them. The U.S. Marshal is explaining, he’s kind of like being our friend. I’ve felt this a few times, too, where they’re trying to be innocent.

They’re saying, ‘Look, we got this man. We had a warrant. He has something of a violent nature. We have to be sure that there wasn’t some kind of human trafficking going on.’ He acted as if they were concerned for the safety of this girl.

This other car pulls up. These two guys jump out in masks. They just look the opposite of all these other guys. They try to take the young girl away from the other woman who, as it turns out, was an aunt.

They get a little bit physical with the older woman just to be able to pull the younger girl away. They pull the girl away, they throw her in the vehicle, and they drive off. The girl was without documents.

I felt kind of stupid. Like why we weren’t we … I don’t know what we could have done. But you feel like you would’ve been, I don’t know, a little bit more assertive, a little bit more aggressive if you could have a sense of what’s going on.