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View Full Version : Lawsuit Seeks Release of Police Commissioner’s Schedule



NewsHound
10-19-2011, 05:27 PM
From NYTImes.com


A civil liberties group filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to force the New York Police Department to release the daily schedules of Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.

The lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan by the New York Civil Liberties Union, characterized Mr. Kelly as “the most important appointed” official in city government, and said that details of whom he meets with remained largely shrouded in secrecy.

Other high-placed officials, including the president, publicly disclose portions of their schedules, the suit said, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last month began posting a detailed version of his daily schedules online.

“There is no good reason for Commissioner Kelly to withhold this information from the public,” Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the civil liberties group, said in a statement. “If it’s safe for the leader of the country to disclose his schedule, then it’s safe for the N.Y.P.D. commissioner to do the same.”

The 10-page lawsuit, which seeks details of Mr. Kelly’s appointments dating to January 2002, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg tapped him for a second stint as police commissioner, was filed on behalf of Leonard Levitt, a former Newsday reporter who now writes a blog about law enforcement matters on his Web site, NYPD Confidential.

Mr. Levitt first requested copies of Mr. Kelly’s schedule in February, under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, four months after reporting last October on Mr. Kelly’s habit of entertaining guests at the Harvard Club, in Midtown. Though some of his expenses at the club, including the annual dues, were paid for by the New York City Police Foundation, neither the foundation nor a spokesman for Mr. Kelly would say whom the commissioner had entertained at the club.

After the Police Department denied Mr. Levitt’s request in May, the civil liberties group appealed it. But a month later, the department denied that appeal, “asserting that disclosing Commissioner Kelly’s schedule over the past decade would endanger both the commissioner and the people with whom he met,” according to a statement from the civil liberties group.

But the lawsuit pointed out that certain information from Mr. Kelly’s appointments could be redacted if it presented a security threat to Mr. Kelly or anyone else. “The department has no authority, however, to categorically withhold the entire schedule,” the suit said.

Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, declined to comment on the suit.

Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, said there was no provision in the City Charter mandating the disclosure of city commissioners’ public schedules. He said a police commissioner should get “broad latitude” in a post-terrorist era.

“The police commissioner of New York City occupies a special, appointed position,” Mr. Moss said. “He’s our secretary of defense, head of the C.I.A. and, I would say, chief architect rolled into one. He may be the one person who we should treat with some respect on his privacy.”

Invoking the television series “24,” Mr. Moss added of Mr. Kelly, “He’s as close as we come to Jack Bauer.”