Days before the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago, police raided a Bridgeport apartment and arrested out-of-town Occupy activists Brian Church, Jared Chase, and Brent Betterly, announcing they had foiled a terrorist plot involving Molotov cocktails. The case was the first prosecution under Illinois's post-9/11 state terrorism statute — and it was built by two undercover Chicago police officers, "Mo" and "Gloves," who had embedded in the protest scene, supplied encouragement, and were present when beer bottles became "weapons."
At trial in 2014 the jury acquitted all three of every terrorism count, convicting only on mob-action and possession charges; jurors and even the sentencing judge scoffed at the terrorism framing, one juror calling the defendants "goofs" rather than terrorists. Sentences of five to eight years still followed. The NATO 3 case marked the arrival of the Green Scare's architecture at street protest: infiltration weeks in advance, terrorism statutes deployed for headline value before a summit, and defendants held on millions in bail while the label — never proven — did its political work.