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8. The Springs

March 21, 2023·34 min·3 clips

A pink-haired volunteer named Chelsea is actually an undercover police detective infiltrating Colorado Springs activists.

Episode 8 takes the listener to Colorado Springs, 70 miles south of Denver, to show that the FBI's infiltration of racial justice activists was not isolated to one city. The episode begins with context: a young Black man named Devon Bailey was shot in the back by a Colorado Springs police officer in August 2019, sparking protests. When George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis in 2020, protests reignited nationally, including in Colorado Springs. A non-profit called the Chinook Center, co-founded by Samantha and John Christiansen, became a hub for left-wing organizing. A young woman with pink hair who went by Chelsea began volunteering at the center, hinting to multiple people that she was a sex worker. Her real name was April Rogers, a Colorado Springs detective operating under the authority of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. On July 31, 2021, activists from the Chinook Center organized a housing rights march timed to clash with the city's 150th anniversary celebration. Police had planned mass arrests in advance, as documented by body camera footage of Officer Scott Alamo reviewing a dossier of social media photos of marchers. Several activists were arrested, and a journalist and Senate staffer named Jacqueline Amandadas Unsueta threw her bicycle down in a moment of panic, leading to a felony charge. Detective Daniel Sumi, working with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, identified Jacqueline through social media and wrote a search warrant application that cited red flags as evidence of revolutionary ideology and included a full-page bikini photo of Jacqueline. Undercover April Rogers separately attempted to get an activist named Artyom to source an illegal gun for her, but he refused. Another activist, Gabriel Palcic, had multiple meetings with men who offered to sell grenades and fully automatic weapons, but never made a purchase. The activists later obtained Alamo's body camera footage through legal discovery in Jacqueline's case and identified April Rogers when they heard Alamo refer to her by name. After her cover was blown, April Rogers disappeared. In spring 2022, the FBI began knocking on activists' doors, confirming they were investigating Gabriel and the entire Chinook Center for political activity. In a state court hearing related to Charles Johnson's arrest, attorney Allison Blackwell called April Rogers as a witness, where she repeatedly declined to answer questions while a Department of Justice attorney sat at the prosecution table. The episode closes with a tease that Mickey Windecker in Denver is about to face accusations of being an informant.

As heard by us

A tense account of a Colorado Springs protest that turns a reflexive bike toss into a punishable moment.

The episode tracks a Colorado Springs protest crackdown with a steady, unsentimental eye, using police body-cam and witness accounts to show how quickly a demonstration slid into arrests.

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Why you'd press play

You want one protest moment to reveal the machinery of punishment.

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