Lawyers fume over seized leaflets at Blaz forum
ONE ATTORNEY has filed legal papers and another has fired off a letter demanding answers from city officials after police confiscated political leaflets from attendees of a town hall held by Mayor de Blasio and City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, the Daily News has learned.
“It’s disgraceful,” lawyer Peter Gleason said. “It’s not a case about money, it’s a case about civil liberties and the Constitution.”
Gleason has filed a notice of claim — the first step in filing a lawsuit — against Chin, in whose district the town hall was held. He took the action on behalf of his client Jeanne Wilcke, the president of the Downtown Independent Democratic club.
Cops confiscated leaflets on a range of topics from scores of attendees on their way into the Chinatown town hall last month.
“If somebody doesn’t stand up and say, ‘Wait, this isn’t right,’ it will happen again,” Wilcke said. “And even if it doesn’t happen again, it shouldn’t be gotten away with that police are sitting there and taking people’s personal property.”
Civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel sent a letter to de Blasio and Police Commissioner James O’Neill on behalf of the SoHo Alliance, telling The News the conduct was “in my opinion a serious violation of the First and Fourth Amendment.”
Another attorney who’s challenging Chin (photo) for her seat previously filed a criminal complaint about the handbill hubbub, according to DNAinfo, which posted video of the security check turned leaflet confiscation.
Siegel said prior Supreme Court decisions have found people have a right to distribute political leaflets at public meetings.
“In my many years, showing my age unfortunately, being a civil rights/civil liberties attorney in New York City this is unheard of,” Siegel told The News. “I can’t think of any constitutional reason why the government has a right to do what they did on June 21, to confiscate political literature.” The NYPD said it made the move after several “altercations” between political groups outside the venue, a YMCA in Chinatown. “After several altercations outside of the town hall between different groups with different signage, the NYPD prohibited signage from the event to prevent another altercation between the groups,” a spokesman said. But Wilcke, who got to the event early, described the vibe differently. “It was a very democratic scene: People giving out flyers and democracy at work,” she said. The NYPD took away 8.5-by-11-inch paper flyers that were not signs, she said. One officer even tried to confiscate ballot petitions she had been storing in her backpack, she said. “They were actually looking for any leaflets and taking them, any of the leaflets, they were taking all of them out of people’s knapsacks, pocketbooks,” Wilcke said. “Even one person had one in his back pocket as he walked in and they told him to come back and said you can’t bring that in.”
She wanted to know who ordered the materials to be taken away.
“It was very much set up that you almost started thinking that this was like a campaign event rather than a true town hall,” she said. “And that’s where the ethics line really blurs.”
Her lawyer put the blame on Chin — naming only her in his notice of claim, not the NYPD or de Blasio. He said it was “indicative of her modus operandi” to silence critics.
Chin’s chief of staff called the notion “absurd.”
City Hall, meanwhile, referred requests for comment to the Law Department — which said it will review any complaints — and then the NYPD when asked about the rules for bringing political literature into the mayor’s town halls.