City’s Finest footage

20 yrs. of cop surveillance film now available

There is no sound, just a collection of black-and-white films featuring some of the most important players in New York and the nation..

There is the mayor, John Lindsay, in Harlem; the president, Jimmy Carter, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and Malcolm X with demonstrators in Brooklyn protesting segregation in construction hiring practices.

Behind the camera is the covert common denominator, the clandestine thread that weaves all the footage together — the NYPD.

For two decades, the department’s surveillance unit filmed everything from parades to protests, from the YWCA to the United Nations, during one of the most tumultuous eras in American history.

And, for the first time ever, New Yorkers can see what they saw.

The city’s Department of Records & Information Services has announced the availability of 140 hours of historical film depicting activists, parades, and famous visitors in the city between 1960 and 1980. The films, now streaming on a city website, were created by the NYPD’s photography unit working with the department’s NYPD’s Bureau of Special Services and Investigations to support investigative and surveillance activities.

The footage provides a never-before-seen visual record of New York’s role in the civil rights movement and anti-war protests

Among the highlights is footage of the first Earth Day march in 1970; rallies held by the Nation of Islam, CORE and NAACP; Young Lords building occupations; protests by gay-rights advocates and massive anti-war demonstrations after the Kent State shootings in May 1970.

During its heyday, the NYPD unit gathered information on individuals and groups across the political spectrum, but particularly civil rights, anti-war and feminist activists.

Now, the NYPD’s intelligence investigations are subject to strict guidelines that would prohibit the department from making many of the films now available with this release, a record department spokesman said.

Digitization of the footage was supported by a grant from the state.

ISTOCK; JAMES MCGRATH; GETTY NYPD video archives are a treasure trove of the city’s history, and a window into how the police kept an eye on public figures, such as Mayor John Lindsay (above left) and Malcolm X (above right).