Daily Archive

A University of Washington police officer secretly attended — and participated in — two organizing meetings of a campus activist group this spring.

Officer Tanesha van Leuven sat in on two meetings where students planned a rally against budget cuts and support for campus custodial workers, calling herself “Tani,” a recent graduate who supported the cause. Her cover was blown weeks later when students who had attended one of the meetings saw her in uniform, getting into a patrol car on campus.

Her infiltration of the second meeting, however, did not become known until the American Civil Liberties Union uncovered it through a public records request.

A university spokesperson said this week that Officer van Leuven’s spying and deception “was not consistent with university policy, and the way we do policing work and it’s certainly not the way we relate to our students.” But activists and civil libertarians are pushing for a state law barring such infiltration in the future.