While the federal Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) worked to subvert the civil rights movement, it was police in Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans and other cities who staged raids of Black Panther chapters, killing and imprisoning many of its local and national leaders. It was local police who violently suppressed anti–Vietnam War demonstrations in Chicago, New York, and Washington and beat and imprisoned civil rights activists in Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery, Alabama.
