Columnist Sues City Over Press Passes

An online columnist who discovered a year ago that the police department would not renew his press pass is suing the city over its refusal to provide him with documents that describe its policy for issuing press passes.

"This is strictly retaliatory," Leonard Levitt, who is widely read within the police department and is frequently critical of its top officials, said in a video posted on the Web site of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is helping him with the case. "There's no question about it."

Mr. Levitt's Web site, nypdconfidential.com, bills itself as "an insider's view of the department that the public rarely sees."

In a column this year, Mr. Levitt reported that Commissioner Raymond Kelly's security detail routinely drove his wife on personal errands, a claim the police department denies.

In an affidavit filed in court, Mr. Levitt claims that, in 2003, Mr. Kelly visited editors at Newsday on Long Island to "complain about the critical coverage of the NYPD in my column." Mr. Levitt left Newsday in 2005 after a decade there. The department extended his press pass through 2006 but did not renew the pass for 2007 or this year.

All press passes in New York City, regardless of a reporter's area of coverage, are issued by the police department.