Police Files on Protesters To Be Released
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Documents describing police surveillance of political groups in the months before the Republican National Convention here in 2004 will be made public despite the city’s objection, a federal magistrate judge has ruled.
The documents are at the center of several lawsuits filed on behalf of some of the 1,800 protesters who were arrested during the convention.
Lawyers for the city had argued that the release of the documents would improperly influence the jurors who will hear the civil suits. The city has not announced whether it will appeal the decision by magistrate-judge James Francis. The documents say the city’s police department sent officers around the country and abroad to gather intelligence about the groups expected to come to the city to protest the convention, according to the New York Times, which obtained the documents.
