Results tagged “nyclu”

One day in September 2008, Queens High School student Stephen Cruz suffered a lacerated forehead when school safety agent Daniel O’Connell, without provocation, allegedly kicked open a restroom stall that Stephen was using. Cruz claims that after he tumbled to the floor bleeding from his head, O'Connell (whom the students called RoboCop) walked away saying, "That's life; it will stop bleeding." Typical robot.

Days after the NYPD announced plans to expand their anti-terror surveillance network to a huge swath of midtown, it's been revealed that the department is also quickly amassing a vast database of cell phone users. Officers have been instructed to remove suspects' cell phone batteries when making an arrest, for the twofold purpose of "avoiding leakage" and also documenting the phone's International Mobile Equipment Identity number [IMEI]. The IMEI number is registered with the service provider whenever a call is made, and can be used to connect the dots between suspects. Naturally, the NYCLU is pissed.

The city will expand the downtown surveillance network commonly referred to as the "Ring of Steel" to midtown, using $24 million in Homeland Security grants. Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly announced yesterday that the new "monitoring network" would cover the areas between 30th and 60th Streets, from the Hudson to the East River. Like the system downtown (formally called the "Lower Manhattan Security Initiative"), the expanded surveillance network would feed streams of data for analysis to a coordination center at 55 Broadway.

Volunteers for the New York Civil Liberties Union are present in some 20 public high schools this week to educate students on their rights when interacting with school safety agents and police officers. Students at select schools with metal detectors, high suspension rates and a heavy police presence are being handed cards [pdf] telling them when and how to object to searches. According to the cards, if a student feels "disrespected," that's enough of a basis to lodge a formal complaint against school safety officers. The NYCLU has been arguing that schools are relying too heavily on the NYPD to enforce school discipline, but according to the Post, critics think the group is "creating a confrontational tone" at the start of the school year. And City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., chairman of the public-safety committee, growls, "It's ridiculous to give children the impression that police are the enemy. Kids only need to know one word when it comes to the police and that's 'cooperate.' " But familiarity with words like "bend" and "over" might also come in handy.

The NYCLU, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, and Make the Road New York have released a report arguing that schools can create a safer environment without metal detectors and harsh discipline. The study, called "Safety with Dignity: Alternatives to Over-Policing Schools," is based on a year-long examination of six NYC schools with "at-risk" student populations that do not use metal detectors. According to the report, these schools have improved attendance, better student retention and graduation rates, and "dramatically fewer" criminal and non-criminal incidents and school suspensions than schools equipped with permanent metal detectors.

Because of the NYPD's abiding commitment to self-transcendence in the fields of racial profiling and constitutional violation, the department has beat its own lofty record for the number of reported stop and frisk interrogations in three months. According to a data revealed today [pdf] at the NYCLU's insistence, the NYPD stopped and searched more innocent people during the first three months of 2009 than during any three-month period since police began collecting data on the program.

As expected, the NYCLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a man who says two NYPD officers forcibly ejected him from the old Yankee stadium last summer when he attempted to use the restroom during the seventh inning stretch, during a broadcast of insipid jingoistic jingle "God Bless America." You'll recall that during a game on August 26th an officer stopped Red Sox fan Brad Campeau-Laurion on his way to the bathroom, telling him that he must wait for the song to conclude. When Campeau-Laurion replied, "Look, I don't care about God Bless America," the cop allegedly grabbed his right arm and twisted it behind his back.

The NYCLU filed a lawsuit yesterday on behalf of a Brooklyn man who says the NYPD has stopped him in the subway and searched his bag an excessive number of times because he looks Middle Eastern. 32-year-old Jangir Sultan was born in Brooklyn, where he currently resides, but he accuses NYPD officers of racial profiling, stopping him 21 times over three years. Police began searching subway riders' bags at checkpoints in 2005 in the wake of the London subway bombings, but the department insists the checks are race-neutral and conducted randomly.

After spending thousands of dollars in legal fees trying to stop the NYPD from videotaping political demonstrations, the NYCLU was surprised and angered to learn recently that the police department had already changed its videotaping practices back in April 2007 without telling them. The Times reports that had lawyers known this, they would have dropped the lawsuit, because the NYCLU is okay with the more restrictive rules, which allow videotaping only where there is illegal activity or for crowd control. Now they're demanding that the city reimburse them for legal fees, and also give them a heads up when they make policy changes. The NYPD insists that they notified both the court and the NYCLU, but one of the lawyers tells the Times, "It reminds me of that cartoon where somebody is running at a wall over and over, and suddenly the door opens, and you realize nobody told you there was a door there."

The NYCLU has fired off a sternly worded letter to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly demanding that police stop arresting children in public schools under the age of 16. The state's Family Court Act prohibits police from arresting kids younger than 16 without a warrant unless they've committed a crime. But according to NYPD data obtained in a Freedom of Information Law request, 309 kids under age 16 were arrested between 2005 and 2007 for offenses like disorderly conduct, loitering, or possession of marijuana or fireworks. (In one case, an 11-year-old was arrested for trespassing at his school.) The NYCLU maintains that most of these are non-criminal offenses.

The NYCLU has filed a new lawsuit against the NYPD. This time around, the NYCLU wants information about the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which involves hundreds (up to thousands) of cameras filming activity downtown.

A witness has come forward to contradict the NYPD's assertion that Red Sox fan Bradford Campeau-Laurion was ejected for "standing on his seat, cursing... and acting in a disorderly manner while reeking of alcohol." Witness Pete Montenez tells CBS 2 that "as far as him hootin' and hollerin' and standing on the chair, no way." He doesn't know Campeau-Laurion, who claims cops ejected him when he tried to go to the men's room during the stadium's enforced moment of nationalism/"God Bless America". But Yankee officials have a witness, who says Campeau-Laurion "stuck his hand out and says, you know, 'I need to get by here,' and he used some profanity." Profanity at a Yankee game? It makes one blush just thinking about it.

The NYCLU seems inclined to follow through with last year's promise to sue the Yankees over their policy of confining fans to their seats during the national anthem and "God Bless America," which is played during the seventh inning stretch. Yesterday Red Sox fan Bradford Campeau-Laurion, a Queens resident, told us about his rough ejection from Yankee stadium at the hands of the NYPD after he tried to go to the men's room during the seventh inning's moment of mandatory nationalism Monday night.

The NYCLU says the NYPD’s “Operation Sentinel,” which would install permanent license plate scanners at each of the 20 crossings into Manhattan, is an unnecessary invasion of privacy. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly wants to form a security ring around the World Trade Center that would make London’s famed “Ring of Steel” look like a velvet rope guarded by Don Knotts. And besides installing radiation detectors that could spot a dirty bomb, the Daily News reports the NYPD wants an additional 100 license plate scanners below Canal Street.

The war between photographers and police wages on, with the latest battleground being Coney Island. The Village Voice reports that Simon Lund, a Manhattan commercial photographer with a habit of hitting Coney 10 to 20 times each summer for personal photographic expeditions, was busted by the NYPD. The thing is, he didn't do anything illegal.

The NY Times looks at NYPD firearms use between 1996 and 2006, finding that though cops are using their guns less these days, "when they do fire, even at an armed suspect, there is often no one returning fire at the officers. Officers hit their targets roughly 34 percent of the time."

The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit accusing the city and NYPD of racial profiling on behalf of a NY Post reporter who was "stopped, arrested and jailed without justification" last November.

Chances are you probably smoke pot, you are probably smoking it right now...at least according to the latest reports, which say that "the number of people arrested for small amounts of marijuana in New York City has increased tenfold in the past decade."

A pair of lawsuits from injured anti-war protesters have caused the NYPD to re-think its pro-active policing policies when it comes to crowd control. The suits, brought against the City by the New York Civil Liberties Union, ended in a settlement that included an agreement that cops would be a little more lenient with protesters.

Leonard Levitt, a veteran journalist who spent 10 years covering the NYPD for Newsday and now writes at his own website, NYPD Confidential, is suing the NYPD over its refusal to grant him a press pass. In this video, Levitt explains how the NYPD's action are "strictly retaliatory," because of his past writing exposing NYPD issues.