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| screenshot of the "watch list" Planned Parenthood sent to the Lubbock Police Department |
L. Scott Mann, who writes for the Lubbock Lights, said that the Lubbock Lights learned about the list from a police department employee.
“...the watch list was widely distributed at the Lubbock Police Department in its raw form because that’s how we learned about it: from someone who thought the information was being mishandled as a matter of police policy and standard procedure,” said Mann.
When Lubbock Lights asked Lubbock Police Chief Floyd Mitchell about the document, he responded with the following message in an email the next day:
Yesterday, you asked about a document referencing individuals associated with the March for Life protest on Friday, Jan. 29, 2021. After further review, the public information unit learned of a document produced by Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas and supplied to the Lubbock Police Department as part of communications prior to the protest. Chief Mitchell believes this is the document Scott was referring to as a “watch list.” This document included 13 individuals Planned Parenthood identified as living “in and around the city of Lubbock, while the others were the ‘big names’ who will be coming in and are listed as speakers at the rallies on Friday and Saturday.”
Officers assigned to coordinate police operations surrounding the logistics of the march conducted a search using open source methods of the individuals and found that all were publicly associated with the March for Life, West Texas For Life or speakers expected at the events being hosted during the weekend’s events. LPD does not maintain lists of protestors identified as pro-life or pro-choice.
Lubbock Lights's article on the incident further notes that Planned Parenthood's email to the department also gave the pro-life activists labels such as "aggressive." The email also included information about the individuals’ families and personal histories.
Planned Parenthood sought to make Lubbock police officers especially suspicious of specific pro-life advocates and encourage their arrest during a legal protest event. It is unknown whether Planned Parenthood employs this tactic regularly.
