In response to news that NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne was caught by The New York Times spreading misinformation, New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman issued the following statement:

The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit challenging the refusal of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to disclose public records concerning a program that allows NYPD officers to regularly patrol privately owned apartment buildings. Landlords can enroll their buildings in the District Attorney’s Trespass Affidavit Program, which permits police officers to patrol the premises. The NYCLU has received numerous reports that police officers make unconstitutional, suspicionless stops – and even trespassing arrests – of TAP building residents and their invited guests.

A U.S. District Court judge has denied New York City’s motion to dismiss a New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the NYPD’s unlawful practice of detaining, questioning and searching innocent New Yorkers – particularly blacks, Latinos and other non-whites – who are passengers in livery cabs.

The New York Civil Liberties Union today requested permission to file a brief with the New York State Court of Appeals that argues that state law requires judges to authorize at least two forms of bail for criminal defendants.

The NYPD is on pace to stop and interrogate a record number of totally innocent New Yorkers in 2011, according to a New York Civil Liberties Union analysis of new police data. During the first three quarters of the year, police stopped totally innocent New Yorkers 451,000 times – the overwhelming majority of whom were black or Latino. NYPD officers have stopped more than 4 million New Yorkers since the Department began collecting data on the program in 2004.

Police arrested or ticketed approximately four students each day in New York City public schools from July through September, according to a New York Civil Liberties Union analysis of new NYPD data. About 94 percent of students arrested were black or Latino; nearly 83 percent were male.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit defending the public’s right to take photographs in the New York City subway system without fear of being arrested or having to show identification to police.

The NYPD’s disciplining of three officers involved in the wrongful arrests of Council Member Jumaane D. Williams and Public Advocate aide Kirsten John Foy is a welcome step, but it does not address systemic injustices that lead to hundreds of thousands of black and Latino New Yorkers being unlawfully stopped, interrogated and pushed into the criminal justice system by police each year, Council Member Williams, Mr. Foy and the New York Civil Liberties Union announced today at a press conference.

The U.S. Border Patrol is using aggressive policing tactics far from the border in upstate New York to increase arrest rates with little regard to New Yorkers’ constitutional rights and freedoms, according to a report released today by the NYU Immigrant Rights Clinic, the New York Civil Liberties Union and Families for Freedom.

On Thursday evening in Albany, the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Region Chapter will honor two state legislators for their long-time advocacy of fair marriage laws, and a grassroots coalition that fights injustice in the state’s prison system.