In May 2003, Oakland police thought it necessary to to infiltrate anti-war groups and in May 2003, two undercover officers got themselves elected to leadership positions.
Two Oakland police officers working undercover at an anti-war protest in May 2003 got themselves elected to leadership positions in an effort to influence the demonstration, documents released Thursday show. The department assigned the officers to join activists protesting the U.S. war in Iraq and the tactics that police had used at a demonstration a month earlier, a police official said last year in a sworn deposition.[...]
The extent of the officers' involvement in the subsequent march May 12, 2003, led by Direct Action to Stop the War and others, is unclear. But in a deposition related to a lawsuit filed by protesters, Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan said activists had elected the undercover officers to "plan the route of the march and decide I guess where it would end up and some of the places that it would go."
For anyone that knows anything about the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 70s, this story ought to remind you of the infamous COINTELPRO program headed by the FBI to suppress and disrupt political dissident groups. Glad to see that not much has changed.