Public housing tenants allege that an Adams-era push to connect CCTV cameras to the NYPD’s real-time surveillance system constitutes illegal surveillance. | Background photo: Zach Korb / Flickr; Security camera: Phonlamai Photo / Getty Images | Illustration: Leor Stylar
Public housing tenants are suing to block the New York City Police Department from implementing one of the biggest video surveillance expansions in the city’s history. The expansion, which was developed in secrecy under former Mayor Eric Adams until a New York Focus investigation and ensuing City Council hearing exposed it, is set to connect nearly 20,000 CCTV cameras in public housing to the police department’s controversial real-time surveillance system.
The litigation, filed this week by two public housing tenant associations, adds to the city’s extended legal fallout from the Adams administration, whose former aides and agency chiefs are facing old and new corruption charges pursued by local authorities and the feds. It also presents an opportunity for the courts to reassert oversight of the city’s sprawling surveillance tech, which has been exported to other municipalities around the country over the last decade…