After a federal appeals court agreed today that the city could ban anti-war demonstrators from marching near the United Nations, Federal Judge Charles Haight ruled today to accept a New York Police Department (NYPD) request to relax restrictions on political surveillance in New York City. Since 1985, the Handschu Agreement has stipulated rules for police spying on political groups.
Meanwhile, Gov. George Pataki yesterday forced an "anti-terrorism" bill through the New York State Senate. According to the New York Times, a hasty vote of 52 to 8 — which came "without a public hearing or even the normal three-day waiting period" — would give local police and prosecutors broad new powers similar to those enjoyed by federal authorities. The bill would also " create several new felonies with stiff sentences."
And rounding out the local-state-federal 1-2-3 punch to New Yorkers' civil liberties, of course, is the Bush sequel to the PATRIOT Act, or as some are calling it, PATRIOT Act II. According to the Center for Public Integrity, the proposed measures give the government "broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic ... law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decreases judicial review and public access to information."
But in light of reports that, "All municipal and state laws that regulate police spying on domestic groups would become invalid" under PATRIOT II, according to Democracy Now, one wonders why state and local governments are fighting so hard to pass their own extreme surveillance measures
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From the October Indypendent
by Diana Wurn
In the midst of your fellow demonstrators’ shouts of “No Blood for Oil” at the next anti-war rally, you may notice something odd. It might be that your new activist friend looks a little out of place. Or it could be that once in awhile he drops his head to his shirt collar and whispers something like: “Operation City Storm is clear. Send in the eagle.”
He may be a cop.
The 1985 Handschu Agreement makes the New York Police Department (NYPD) the only police force in America that operates with clear limitations on how and when it can spy on political groups. But if the NYPD has its way, that could all change very soon.
Late last month, NYPD lawyers filed papers in federal district court arguing for a removal of all limitations from the Handschu Agreement and unfettered police authority to monitor political expression.
Currently, Handschu requires the NYPD to obtain advance permission from a special panel before infiltrating political groups. If police have evidence that a crime may take place, they have 48 hours to file a request with the Handschu Authority panel, which can approve an operation. Police must return for new authorization if they wish to continue surveillance beyond 30 days.
There are limitations with Handschu, though. The biggest one may be the composition of the panel. With two police officers and one civilian appointed by the mayor, odds are stacked in favor of approval for police surveillance. Even so, Handschu makes New Yorkers the only Americans currently protected from overzealous local police.
If the Handschu is repealed to suit the NYPD’s desires, though, New Yorkers can expect increased political surveillance and photography at political events, says Nancy Chang, senior litigation attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“One problem with police monitoring of groups is that it has a chilling effect on freedom of expression,” Chang said.
The chilling effect could extend from participation in religious activities to speaking out against the impending war on Iraq.
Chang points out that people engage in self-censorship when they know they are being watched and their activities recorded.
Elimination of the Handschu decree would sacrifice the protections that now exist. “They are significant protections,” said Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union. It would also become more difficult to track police activity, Dunn said.
Handschu is more than a formality, argues City University of New York School of Law Professor Franklin Siegel. It “creates a paper trail. Over time, if a party believes an action has been unjust, they can look up who authorized it,” he said. If the decree is removed, that paper trail will be eliminated.
The initiative to repeal Handschu recalls Attorney General John Ashcroft's wish to remove restrictions that have previously prevented FBI agents from gathering information by spying on law-abiding political and religious groups. Last year’s U.S.A. Patriot Act has also dampened dissent against government policies by significantly easing restrictions on surveillance and widening the scope of who can be monitored, particularly for alleged terrorism.
With their request to the court, New York police are now seeking similar freedom to conduct wide-ranging surveillance, with equally wide potential for abuses. It was activists in the 1970s who demanded a paper trail on police harassment of political groups which spawned the Handschu Agreement.
The Handschu agreement grew from a lawsuit filed by civil rights groups in 1971. The complaint alleged that a branch of the Police Department called the Security and Investigation Section had violated the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution through activities that monitored groups then critical of the government, including the Black Panthers.
The activists’ lawsuit outlined seven categories of violations, including: use of informants, infiltration of groups, illegal interrogations, overt surveillance, summary punishment, intelligence gathering and electronic surveillance.
The court documents asserted that police spies secretly infiltrated groups and “provoked, solicited and induced members of lawful political and social groups to engage in unlawful activities.”
According to the complaint, officers not only urged participation in criminal activity, but funded it. Members of political groups were encouraged by undercover officers to participate in armed robbery and also to plan the bombing of a government agency, the plaintiffs asserted.
In response, New York’s police commissioner at the time suggested that if those actions occurred, they were mere “aberrations.”
Now, 16 years after the lawsuit culminated in the Handschu Agreement, today’s Police Commissioner, Raymond Kelly, says Handschu has tied his department’s hands in its efforts to spy on terrorists. However, when confronted by Newsday’s Leonard Levitt, Kelly was unable to site one actual example of how Handschu guidelines were hindering police in their fight against terrorism.
It could take months or even years before a decision is made on the police request that was presented to Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr. Police promise a public meeting to permit citizen comments on the matter, but no date has been announced yet.
“It will be long and contentious and very public,” said Siegel, who will work in opposition to the police as class counsel on the case. He cautioned that “inflammatory and urgent” language is used in the brief.
“You say terrorism and everyone gets weak in the knees,” asserts Siegel.
