Category: NYPD

NYPD Fails to Respond to Motion for Injunction

Today marks the two-week anniversary of my latest lawsuit, requesting the federal courts to shut down the NYPD’s plans to scan New Yorkers as they walk down the streets for guns without suspicion at all. The city was simultaneously served the complaint as well as a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction*. By local rule, their opposition, if any, is due by midnight tonight. So far, crickets chirp when opening the docket.

What does this mean? Likely the city asking for an extension shortly, which would probably be granted, but may not be: motions for temporary restarining order can be granted ex parte, so technically the judge needn’t have waited for a reply at all. I’ve e-mailed the city’s attorneys in hopes that the new e-mail sound effect on their inbox will wake them from their slumber. It’s nice to see that the city takes this matter as seriously as it does the civil liberties of its citizens.

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* What’s the difference between a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, you say? In the federal courts, a temporary restraining order is a short-term injunction that a judge can act on immediately, without waiting for the other party to respond, lasting only until a motion for preliminary injunction can be heard. A preliminary injunction, on the other hand, requires motion practice including time for oppositions and replies, but this type of injunction can last until the merits of the case are decided — potentially for years.

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Q&A on Lawsuit Against NYPD Scanners

Thanks again for your support — yesterday was awesome! 🙂 It feels so good to make a difference, and win or lose on the suit, the NYPD’s plans to scan people walking the sidewalks of the city are now front and center — before hundreds of these things were deployed. If we only would have hit the TSA hard when they were doing pilots of their scanners, I think we would have had a chance at stopping the whole thing, and I hope not to let that opportunity go to waste here.

I’m seeing some recurring questions and misconceptions in the comments here and on the news sites (NY Daily News, NY Post, Village Voice, Gothamist), so I wanted to comment more prominently on the following:

Q. These scanners don’t produce embarassing images like the TSA scanners… what’s the big deal?
A. The big deal about the NYPD scanners is not that they’re conducting an intrusive, invasive, or embarassing search. The big deal is that they’re conducting a search at all. The police may not search the people without individualized suspicion. They’re not even allowed to demand ID without reasonable suspicion. To allow them to search our bodies in any way is entirely novel to this great nation.

Q. If the scanners were more accurate / less prone to error / more specific, would you still be opposed?
A. Yes! NO SEARCH is allowed without reasonable suspicion. Even that is a stretch from the intent of the framers of the Constitution, who specifically called for probable cause (a much higher standard), but the Supreme Court has allowed police a limited exception for weapons checks at the lower standard of reasonable suspicion.

Q. Then how do you expect the police to get illegal guns off the streets?
A. These scanners actually bring New York’s gun laws front and center. In any other state, save for perhaps IL and DC, having a gun doesn’t presume you to be a criminal. In NY, it is so impossible to get a gun license that the police expect that they can scan the general public and anyone with a gun is almost certainly a criminal. People walking around with guns should not be presumed to be criminals in America, and the NYPD’s attempt to make it so is appalling. Chicago and DC’s handgun laws have been firmly slapped down over the past few years, and I expect NY will feel the same quite soon. For example, it is currently an impossibility for me to legally carry a gun in NY — the state does not accept out-of-state pistol permit applicants and honors no other state’s licenses. How is it that the second amendment guarantees our right to bear arms (as confirmed by the Supreme Court) yet I can’t legally do so in NY? Regardless, NY can do what every other state does: if you have reason to think someone has an illegal gun, get a search warrant.

Q. Why didn’t you bring up the radiation issue? These things are dangerous!
As best my research has led me at this point, I do not believe that NYPD scanners emit any radiation — they appear to be “passive” scanners, which means they are basically just digital cameras that capture a different type of light and run analysis on that light. They don’t put out their own light. If it comes out that these scanners do emit their own terahertz waves, we can look at the issue from there.

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Lawsuit Filed Against NYPD Street Body Scanners

When the TSA brought nude body scanners to the airports, demanding that the citizens allow the government to photograph them naked in order to get on a plane, there were some who said, “If you don’t like it, don’t fly!” That we should give up some of our liberty in order to “keep us safe,” because airports are where all the terrorists are.

When the TSA started paying visits to Amtrak and Greyhound stations, there were some who still didn’t see the problem. After all, “I’ve got nothing to hide!”

Now the NYPD has asked us to accept body scanners on the streets, allowing them to peer under your clothes for “anything dangerous” — guns, bombs, the Constitution — from up to 25 yards away for, you know, our safety. (And someone please think of the children!)

nypdscanI’m pleased to have filed the first lawsuit against the nude body scanners after the TSA deployed them as primary screening in 2010, and I’m pleased to announce that today I filed suit against New York City for its testing and planned (or current?) deployment of terahertz imaging devices to be used on the general public from NYPD vans parked on the streets — a “virtual stop-and-frisk.” My civil complaint, Corbett v. City of New York, 13-CV-602, comes attached with a motion for a preliminary injunction that would prohibit use of the device on random people on their way to school, work, the theater, or the bar.

It is unfortunate that it seems that government at all levels is always in need of a fresh reminder that the citizens for whom it exists demand privacy, and that each technological advance is not a new tool to violate our privacy. However, as often as proves to be necessary, we will give them that reminder.

Corbett v. City of New York II – Complaint with Exhibits
Corbett v. City of New York II – Motion for Preliminary Injunction

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NYPD to Implement Long-Range Body Scanners on Streets to Look for Guns — Shall I Sue?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2267217/Forget-pat-downs-NYPD-testing-handheld-X-ray-device-detect-concealed-weapons.html

The TSA argues that its nude body scanners are necessary because of the specific risk of air terrorism. But random police checkpoints have never been allowed to force random searches, and case law on thermal imaging, which is a lot less detailed than terahertz imaging, is clear that it requires a warrant. Beyond that, having a gun in an airport is illegal, but having a gun on the street is constitutionally-protected, so the entire premise of the search is flawed.

I just happen to be about 1 mile from the federal courthouse in Manhattan. What do you guys think — will you be here to support me if I take this one on?

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New York Attorney Needed

I’m looking for a NY-licensed attorney willing to donate about half an hour of his time to give me some thoughts on a new project I have going on that aims to curb abusive NYPD stop-and-frisks. I expect this project to be for stop-and-frisk what my video was for TSA body scanners. 😉

If you or someone you know fits that criteria, please contact me at: jon [at] fourtentech.com

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NYPD: Don’t Mind That Unlawful Stop-And-Frisk Over There!

I asked the court hearing my lawsuit against NYPD stop-and-frisk for permission to file the audio recording I posted last week of NYPD officers stopping and frisking a teen for no reason, then cursing at and assaulting him. The NYPD filed opposition to admitting that evidence today because it’s “irrelevant” to my case.

Although I’m allowed to file a lengthy reply citing all the cases where similar evidence was deemed relevant, I feel that my one paragraph reply got the point across:

The case at bench alleges a custom and/or policy of unlawful stop-and-frisks by the NYPD. If the City’s Law Department seriously cannot figure out how an audio recording of another man’s blatantly unlawful stop-and-frisk at the hands of NYPD officers is relevant to this case, it is no wonder that the City’s police officers cannot figure out the difference between lawful and unlawful search and seizure.

Hey, at least they didn’t beat me like the student they beat last week whom they “mistakenly” (that is, without investigation) believed was tresspassing.

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NYPD to Teen: “Shut your fucking mouth before I slap you!”

The NYPD says that stop-and-frisks are a minor inconvenience that are necessary to ensure the safety of the community and their officers. When I was stopped-and-frisked last year for being a white guy in a black neighborhood, I learned that that wasn’t quite true. Of course, minority residents of New York have known this for years: stop-and-frisks are frightening interactions where citizens are accosted by groups of armed men without reasonable suspicion, are cursed at, are threatened, are battered, and are degraded — and often times taken to jail on fabricated charges. Finally, the NYPD was caught on tape by a stop-and-frisk victim in Harlem who was able to start recording on his phone without the officers’ knowledge.

The officers give their victim three reasons for the stop: 1) he was looking at them, 2) he was wearing a hoodie, and 3) “for being a fucking mutt.” No, I’m not making this up. They then proceed to curse at him, threaten him, and then push him repeatedly. The whole interaction lasted not even 2 minutes, and from that I gathered the following brilliant quotes:

  • “Why are you a fucking wiseass, I’m gonna smack you.”
  • “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”
  • “Shut your fucking mouth, kid.”
  • “I will break your fucking arm, motherfucker.”
  • “Dude I am going to fucking break your arm and then I’m going to punch you in your fucking mouth.”
  • “Shut your fucking mouth before I slap you.”
  • “You fucking piece of shit, take a fucking walk.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what stop-and-frisk really feels like. This is how the NYPD treats the community it is paid to protect. And this is why stop-and-frisk needs to go.

Source article with raw audio: http://www.thenation.com/article/170413/stopped-and-frisked-being-fking-mutt-video

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NYPD Butthurt That They’re Getting Same Treatment As TSA

EDIT: Brief summary for all those new to the blog since this post is generating quite a bit of external traffic. I was stopped in the middle of 2011 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on my way home after visiting a friend of mine who lived there, by 4 NYPD officers in an unmarked car. They detained me, threatened me with arrest, and searched me because I didn’t want to talk to them, which is, of course, my right. I sued the city, who has mysteriously been “unable” to find these officers and now suggests that they probably don’t even exist. In light of the fact that the NYPD stops and frisks 700,000 people on NYC streets annually, that does not seem to be the likely explanation. My background is that I am a tech entrepreneur, musician, and civil rights advocate, and you may be familiar with my work on the latter via my “How to Get ANYTHING Through TSA Nude Body Scanners” viral video published this March.

In documents filed today in my lawsuit against the NYPD for stopping and frisking me on the street because I was a white boy in a black neighborhood (which naturally means I’m a drug dealer), NYPD attorney Vicki Zgodny (on whom the City wastes $65K/year to make such [losing] arguments as “a unicycle is a bicycle“) whines that “Plaintiff has garnered media attention from other lawsuits he has brought, including a lawsuit against Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in which plaintiff maintains a blog, and has threatened to focus the same media attention on the instant lawsuit if the City does not settle the case.” They continue that I “have an agenda to criticize the NYPD and any government agency that he is displeased with just as he did with the Transportation Security Administration.”

I’m “displeased” when you ban sodas larger than 16 ounces, when you have the largest police force in the world but your response time to 911 calls averages 9 minutes, and when you decide you know better than both doctors and the law (repeatedly) regarding what women should and should not do with their breasts. But I file suit when you infringe on my personal, constitutionally-guaranteed liberties, demand “papers, please!” as I walk down the street, and put your hands on my body with neither my consent nor reasonable suspicion. I suspect you’d do the same, Vicki, if a bunch of NYPD thugs felt you up as you walked down the street.

So, you’re damn right that the NYPD is in the same boat as the TSA. Both of you violate the citizens on a daily basis in the name of “keeping us safer,” both of you have a habit of lying, covering up, and trying to use legal nuances such as immunity and jurisdiction defenses to keep your actions away from a jury, and both of you are right to fear that I will expose your unlawful and uncivilized behavior to the public in a major way, such as I did for the TSA last March.

Relevant Docs:
Corbett v. NYPD – Summary Judgment 56.1 Statement
Corbett v. NYPD – Summary Judgment Reply

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Amended Complaint against NYPD Ready, New TSA Complaint on 3/2

While my original 10 page complaint against the NYPD was sufficient to get my foot in the door, my new 15 page, 56 count complaint should light a fire under the city’s ass for sure.

The biggest challenge in suing the government (any government) as far as writing the complaint is naming the correct parties. For some claims, you need to name the city, and others, the official him/herself. Complaints the TSA are even more complex, as sometimes you need to name the TSA, sometimes the official, and other times the United States. This legal subterfuge is required even though no matter who I name, it’s the city that will pay the settlement or judgment in the end.

My NYPD case had been challenged by the fact that the city, thus far, cannot “find” the officers who illegally detained and searched me. Despite having some of the best detectives in the world, when it comes to investigating themselves, they seem to have a bit of trouble.

The problem isn’t that the case can’t move forward against the city even if they can’t find the officers, but that all of the charges that require me to name the official would be dismissed if we can’t name them, which would very much limit the suit. The solution: name the commissioner. 🙂 Ray Kelly has presided over the great expansion of the stop-and-frisk abuse, and his actions and inactions are responsible for what happened to me. As such, he’s an official I can name, and even if the four unnamed cops are dismissed from the case, the charges that require a named official may proceed against Mr. Kelly.

My amended complaint is below, and keep an eye out for my new TSA complaint coming in less than 2 weeks!

Corbett v. City of New York – First Amended Complaint with Exhibits (.pdf)

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NYPD Lawyers: Cops Have Right to Ask for ID, Search Pedistrians at Will

I had a discovery hearing yesterday for my NYPD lawsuit (regarding last June, when I was stopped on the street and forcibly searched for being a white guy in a black neighborhood). At the hearing, the magistrate point-blank asked the city’s attorneys if the police had the right to ask for ID and search me, to which the city’s attorneys responded, “yes.”

How many times must this behavior be struck down by courts at every level? In New York, a cop cannot ask you for ID without an “articulable reason” (People v. De Bour, 40 NY2d 210). Under federal law, a cop cannot search you without warrant, probable cause, or suspicion that you are armed and dangerous (Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 [1968]); in the last instance, only the minimum search required to show that you are not armed is permissible.

New York City stops and searches something like half a million people annually. It is time that we put a stop to this nonsense, and the courts have given us the tools — we just have to use them.

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