Appeals court throws out ruling ordering NYPD to release RNC protest surveillance documents

NY appeals court tosses ruling on RNC surveillance

NEW YORK — A court overstepped its authority by trying to force the New York Police Department to release of hundreds of pages of documents about its infiltration of protest groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention, an appeals court found Wednesday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reversed the district court’s ruling that ordered the nation’s largest police department to turn over secret “field reports” to protesters who sued the city over their arrests.

The ruling said that the city “met its burden of showing that law enforcement privilege applies to field reports — even as redacted by the district court — because the reports contain detailed information about the NYPD’s undercover law enforcement techniques and procedures.”

Before the convention, members of the NYPD’s Intelligence Division went undercover and infiltrated protest groups that wanted to disrupt the convention. Information in the undisclosed documents “reinforces the city’s assertions that the public faced a substantial threat of disruption and violence during the RNC,” the appeals court wrote.

In a statement, city lawyer Celeste Koeleveld said the court agreed that the plaintiffs “have no compelling need for these sensitive materials.”

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne also praised the decision.

“The court recognized that protecting their identities and methods of operations is important to the public interest and crucial to undercovers’ safety and effectiveness,” Browne said.

An attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union — which filed the lawsuit accusing the police of violating the protesters’ civil rights — said the case would go forward.

“The police documents remaining in the case are the 600 pages already produced to us, and nothing in those reports begins to justify the NYPD’s mass arrest, prolonged detention, and blanket fingerprinting of law-abiding protesters and bystanders during the Convention,” the lawyer, Chris Dunn, said in a statement.

In a 2007 decision later upheld by a district judge, U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis had said the field reports could be released in redacted form to hide the identities of undercover officers and confidential tactics.

“Information is not privileged simply because it was obtained as a result of an undercover investigation,” he wrote. “Information is privileged only when its disclosure would interfere with legitimate law enforcement interests.”

More than 1,800 people were arrested at the four-day convention at Madison Square Garden, where President Bush accepted his party’s nomination for a second term in office.