Schoolcraft v. The City Of New York et al

Filing 237

DECLARATION of Graham Rayman in Opposition re: 223 MOTION to Compel Graham Rayman to Produce Documents.. Document filed by Graham Rayman. (Korzenik, David)

DAVID S. KORZENIK
Miller Korzenik Sommers LLP
488 Madison Avenue, Suite 1120
New York, NY 10022
Phone: [phone]
Attorneys for Graham Rayman

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
----------------------------------------------------------X
ADRIAN SCHOOLCRAFT,
Plaintiff,

Civil Action No. 10-cv-6005 (RWS)

-vCITY OF NEW YORK, et. al.,
Defendants
----------------------------------------------------------X

DECLARATION OF GRAHAM RAYMAN
IN SUPPORT OF OPPOSITION TO MOTION TO COMPEL DOCUMENTS
AND CROSS-MOTION TO QUASH SUBPOENA

GRAHAM RAYMAN declares as follows:
1. I am a freelance journalist, formerly employed by the Village Voice. I have been a
reporter for 24 years, covering crime, courts, politics and a range of other beats here in
New York City for the Voice, and before that for Newsday.
2. In 2010, I wrote a series of articles in the Village Voice, “The NYPD Tapes.” That series
was based on interviews with many sources, including Adrian Schoolcraft, and on
numerous materials, including digital recordings made by Schoolcraft. My book, also
titled “The NYPD Tapes,” was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. The Book and
the Articles exposed manipulation of crime statistics in the NYPD and provided evidence
of civil rights violations and illegal quotas – issues of critical public concern to everyday
New Yorkers.
3. In the ensuing months and years, the NYPD was obliged to start investigations and take
disciplinary action. The Schoolcraft recordings were used in Floyd v. City of New York,
the landmark stop-and-frisk class action lawsuit. The subject of stop-and-frisk covered in
the Book and Articles became an issue of growing and important public debate and
arguably affected the mayoral election and a range of public policy issues – not just in
New York City but in other cities as well. The work led to coverage in a wide range of
publications, including a number of columns in The New York Times by Jim Dwyer (see,
for example, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/nyregion/officer-sues-claiming-policeretaliation-for-truth-telling.html?_r=0). Even years after the series was published, this
work is still being cited. (See, for example, a Ta-Nehisi Coates column in the Atlantic
Monthly on the national policy implications of profiling, available at
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/profiling-comes-to-the-white-

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house/277943/.) Since the series ran, I have received hundreds of messages from New
Yorkers, and people around the country, including members of the law enforcement
community, thanking me for reporting these issues. Thus, this work is a clear example of
public interest journalism, the kind of work that often requires tremendous time, effort
and resources.
4. I faced many challenges in reporting this story. City officials, including those running the
Police Department, did not want to discuss the Schoolcraft matter or its implications, or
even provide a single document about it. Members of the NYPD would not speak with
me for the record out of a real fear for their jobs. And so there was no way I could have
covered these issues, critical to the public interest, had my sources not been able to trust
me.
5. The journalist’s privilege exists to permit sources to trust reporters. The privilege may not
be absolute in all circumstances, but it is crucial to the efficacy of important public
interest reporting. The only way I can do my job – indeed the only way any reporter can
do his or her job – is if I can convince sources to trust me. If sources think that the
government or any litigant can just reach into our work three years later and use the
power of subpoena to compel us to turn over documents and sources and turn journalists
into witnesses against them or even for them, then no one will trust us, and stories like
the ones I wrote about the NYPD will never be told.
6. For that reason I do not wish to accommodate demands for the materials I obtained in the
course of my newsgathering for this story but will provide only such documents as I am
obliged to produce – documents the Court in its fair judgment determines the reporter’s
privilege does not protect.

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7. The federal reporter’s privilege may not be as firm as the New York State Shield Law.
But I trust that the Court, as it balances the factors to be considered in this case, will take
into account the nature and value of reports on the subject matter of my Book and
Articles as well as the necessity of journalists being able to maintain the trust of their
sources, who in the end are the life-blood of what we do. To do otherwise would have a
chilling effect on newsgathering as it would impede reporting on matters of significant
public interest.
8. I note as well that the underlying lawsuit does not directly concern the issues I covered.
The litigation is, at its heart, an employment dispute. Both sides have ample material to
adjudicate the dispute on their own without imposing on third-party journalists. It seems
that the City merely wants me to open my files so it can sift through them in search of
anything that might impeach Schoolcraft. That is a sideshow that I need not be called
upon to support. The City has abundant material, alternative sources, witnesses and
depositions with which to make its case. It is interesting to observe that the City has no
idea what the materials it seeks contain. The materials that are “responsive” to its
requests would likely be disadvantageous to its case, yet it still wants to sift through
them.
9. Granting the City’s requests would raise further complications because, despite the City’s
contrary assertion, Adrian Schoolcraft was certainly not my only source for this work. I
did have confidential sources and confidentiality agreements. While those confidences
may not be implicated in the City’s more targeted requests for specific documents (Nos.
1-13), Nos. 14-23 request a broad range of documents, often described as anything “not
otherwise listed above.” These requests are quite likely to encompass material I received

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in confidence. Further, although the City contends otherwise, the very act of describing
the material in my possession and

identiffing the documents that would be privileged

would not only be burdensome but would also force me to reveal privileged information.
10.

Finally, I never made any payments to Adrian or Larry Schoolcraft, nor am I aware of
any payments ever made to them by the Village Voice or Palgrave Macmillan. I did have
a discussion

with Larry Schoolcraft about payment for the use of photographs, but

nothing came of that and I did not pay him for any material.

For these reasons, I request that the Court deny the City's motion to compel and grant my

motion to quash the City's document subpoena to me, to which I timely objected. See
Objections, Attached as Exhibit C to the Crty's Mettham Declaration.

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America and the
State of New York that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed in New York, N.Y.
on March 28,2014.

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