NEW YORK—A lawsuit challenging the refusal of the Manhattan district attorney’s office to reveal which private buildings are part of a program that lets police officers patrol them with a landlord’s request, was filed on Monday by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The Trespass Affidavit Program aims to combat crime in and around commercial buildings, including violence and drug deals. When the district attorney’s (DA) office receives confidential complaints about the drug trade in a certain building, they contact the landlord and register them in the program, according to the DA’s website.
To enter the program, landlords must sign an affidavit, submit a tenant list, provide the local precinct with keys to their building, and post no trespassing signs outside their building.
More than 3,200 buildings are enrolled in the program, according to a DA document and hundreds of arrests have been made through patrols in participating private buildings.
“There is no good reason to withhold this information from the public,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a release. “People have raised serious concerns that the NYPD is using this program to bring its unlawful stop-and-frisk practices into apartment buildings—literally into people’s homes. These concerns can only be resolved through transparency, not stonewalling.”
The NYCLU filed a Freedom of Information Law request with the DA seeking information about the program, including policies, a roster of enrolled buildings, and trespass arrests during 2009 and 2010.
The DA said disclosing the information would be an invasion of the landlords’ privacy, which prompted the NYCLU’s lawsuit—filed on Jan. 20 in State Supreme Court for New York County—which argues that privacy is not an issue since no trespassing signs are publicly visible as required under the program.
