Two veteran New York City newspaper reporters who cover the NYPD were given the boot Thursday from the media trailer at police headquarters dubbed “the Shack.”
Tina Moore, police bureau chief of the New York Post, and Maria Cramer, police bureau chief of the New York Times, were barred from NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza in lower Manhattan and their passes deactivated after attempting to contact NYPD officers without first going through the department’s press office, according to the Post and The Times.
NYPD brass told the reporters they each had violated a set of previously agreed-upon rules. However, nothing in the written rules, reviewed by the Daily News, says anything about how reporters should contact officers.
Moore, who was attempting to find an officer for a 9/11 legacy story, was physically escorted out of the Shack on Thursday by two members of the NYPD. Cramer received the news via a phone call from an assistant police commissioner.
Both reporters were barred from police headquarters until Sept. 16, although Moore’s access was restored on Friday morning.
“This week, the N.Y.P.D. revoked access for one of our reporters to enter 1 Police Plaza. The Times has not yet received a suitable explanation for this action, and any suggestion that our reporter behaved unethically is false,” Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said in a statement. “This restriction to a free and independent press is concerning, and we look forward to further explanation from the N.Y.P.D., including the full reversal of this revocation.”
In a statement, an NYPD spokesperson cited the “limited number of spots” available for journalists and the “privilege to experience the proximity to NYPD personnel” in a statement.
“The press requires and insists that NYPD personnel maintain high ethical and moral standards at all times,” the spokesperson said. “The same expectations and requirements are placed on all reporters who have been granted the privilege of working inside police headquarters.”
A list of “NYPD Media Center Regulations” reviewed by the Daily News goes over various rules about how members of the press should conduct themselves while working from police headquarters — but it does not include guidelines for how to contact members of the police department and says nothing about whether reaching out directly to NYPD officials is grounds for expulsion from the headquarters.
The Post declined to comment.
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