Even as Arnold promotes soft-on-crime bail policies, he uses rising crime to push for unprecedented government surveillance, despite the shocking revelation in recent years of systemic surveillance abuses of government intelligence agencies. Under the guise of “security,” these agencies launched mindboggling surveillance crackdowns on regular Americans simply because of their ideological leanings. But Arnold wants government to have more surveillance power.
In 2016, Arnold Ventures used the Baltimore Community Foundation as a vehicle to fund a secret, unchecked and warrantless aerial and signals surveillance program over the city of Baltimore at the behest of the Baltimore Police Department. This surveillance program was conducted by Persistent Surveillance Systems (PSS), an Ohio based company run by Air Force veteran Ross McNutt. In a working paper by the RAND Corporation, the project that Arnold spent $5 million on from start to finish resulted in a negligible impact on street crime, with carjackings increasing.
Having failed in Baltimore, the program was then pitched to Saint Louis, Detroit, Dayton and other American cities using the same methodologies. While Arnold provided the funding, McNutt went far deeper, finding local allies advocating for his surveillance programs via community organizations created specifically for this purpose nearly overnight. While Baltimore was the only apparent field test, it is clear that Arnold had a continued interest in surveillance—investing far more funds than previously known.
In the aftermath of Arnold’s warrantless surveillance program in 2016, Arnold’s team, led by Ross McNutt of Persistent Surveillance Systems tried a new approach. They enlisted a Baltimore resident to be the face of their program. Through resident Archie Williams, McNutt could appeal to Baltimore residents directly, hosting over 30 meetings with Williams and renaming the program the “Community Support Program.” Williams claimed he felt moved to work with McNutt after hearing him speak about the surveillance project at another event.
Williams had no background in community activism prior to 2016. He hosted an unrelated podcast intermittently in 2018 that by all accounts was not popular. (For example, a review of over 11 years of social media finds no evidence of any activism whatsoever.) Williams appeared, seemingly overnight, and instantly began to ingratiate himself on social media with a website and Facebook page for the group, “Community With Solutions.” Yet there is no contact information for him, nor does he appear to be formally attached to either.
Interestingly, McNutt attempted to develop the same strategy of using a community resident to promote his program in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio. McNutt recruited local activists from several neighborhoods with historic crime issues, namely Wright Dunbar and Huber Heights, according to interviews. This effort failed. McNutt then moved on to Saint Louis, to attempt the same recruitment and funding pitch, only to be met with a combined effort from Baltimore and Saint Louis community leaders and activists that caused this attempt to fail.
In what appeared to be an effort to cover the rejection of the program in Saint Louis, the Arnold Foundation itself stated it would not “fund the program in the city due to a lack of investment from the city”, an odd take from a philanthropic organization trying to stop violent crime.