September 13, 2011

The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a motion for permission to file a friend-of-the-court brief requesting that a judge stop an unconstitutional Suffolk County proposal that seeks to curb gang violence by prohibiting 37 people from gathering together in a public places in Wyandanch.

“The Constitution does not permit the government to banish people from public streets,” said Amol Sinha, director of the NYCLU’s Suffolk County Chapter. “The police should absolutely enforce the law – and they have tools at their disposal to do so if and when laws are broken. But it’s unconstitutional and unwise to arrest people simply for entering public places before they’ve ever done something wrong.”

The Wyandanch proposal outlines a zone where 37 specific people would not be permitted to gather together at any time, for any purpose, including religious worship, political meetings or just to pass through.

The county’s proposal is unconstitutional because it would permit the police to arrest individuals simply for entering public places when there is no evidence of any criminal activity – a clear violation of the constitutional right to freedom of movement and the most basic restrictions on governmental authority.

New York courts have routinely struck down similar proposals. In City of New York v. Andrews, decided in June 2000, the NYCLU defeated New York City’s attempt to obtain a similar injunction that would have banished certain individuals from an area known to be frequented by gangs.

“Suffolk County wants to preemptively arrest people it thinks are prone to criminal activity. It’s like something out of Minority Report,” said NYCLU Senior Staff Attorney Corey Stoughton. “But no one has a crystal ball to predict who will break the law. It is fundamentally inconsistent with our justice system to assume that someone will commit a crime and punish them before they’ve ever done something wrong.”

Banishing alleged gang members from certain parts of town is not the solution to gang violence, and research links gang injunctions to an increase in gang violence.

“This kind of dragnet policing runs the risk of sweeping up innocent people and subjecting them to arrest even when they have done nothing wrong,” Sinha said. “Punitive, restrictive measures do not address the root causes of gang violence but instead target people of color, and young black men in particular, even when they are not engaged in any criminal activity.”

The brief was filed in New York State Supreme Court in Suffolk County by Stoughton, NYCLU Legal Director Arthur Eisenberg and NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn.