Levitt v. NYPD (Seeking access to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly’s daily schedule)

This lawsuit challenges the NYPD’s refusal to disclose basic details of Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s daily schedule. The NYCLU filed the lawsuit, an Article 78 petition, in State Supreme Court of New York County on Oct. 18, 2011 on behalf of journalist Leonard Levitt, who has reported on the NYPD for decades. In February 2011, Levitt requested under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) copies of Commissioner Kelly’s schedule that would reveal the identity of people he had met with since January 2002. He sought this information after having reported about previously unknown meetings that Kelly had held at the Harvard Club in New York City. The NYPD entirely denied Levitt’s FOIL request in May. The NYCLU appealed the NYPD’s denial in June 2011. The NYPD denied the appeal asserting that disclosing Commissioner Kelly’s schedule over the past decade would endanger both the commissioner and the people with whom he had met.

In October 2010, Levitt published a column revealing that since 2002, Commissioner Kelly had regularly met with prominent people for lunch at the Harvard Club and that a foundation controlled by the commissioner had paid for those lunches. Levitt’s disclosures about the Harvard Club meals triggered substantial press coverage. In a February 2011 column, Levitt noted that reports in the New York Daily News revealed that Kelly had spent more than $15,000 at the Harvard Club in 2008, “the year he was seriously considering running for mayor.” The lawsuit argues that the public has a substantial interest in knowing the identities of people who Commissioner Kelly meets with as well the subjects of those meetings. It maintains that withholding records containing this information violates the law. It also asserts that the NYPD could legally withhold any requested information that would endanger Kelly or anyone else, compromise ongoing police investigations, or violate the privacy of people the commissioner has met with.

State Supreme Court, New York County, Index No. 11-111836 (direct)