The New York Police Department is yet again trying to shuffle the reporters who cover them—this time to a trailer outside their headquarters. For years, reporters have worked inside police headquarters at 1 Police Plaza, in a section of the building referred to as “the Shack.” There, you’ll find a warren of individual offices occupied by several news organizations—the New York Post, Newsday, The New York Times, CBS, Gothamist/WNYC, and The New York Daily News—and, on a crowded day, about a half dozen reporters dispersed among them. Rumors that Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Tarik Sheppard—the NYPD’s chief spokesperson—wanted to relocate reporters, purportedly to make more space for NYPD units, have been circulating for months. But on Monday, the idea seemed to become a reality, when two reporters who happened to be at HQ that day got an informal tour of their new digs. They were told they’d be moving the following Monday.
Reporters’ objections to the move are not a matter of comfort. The Shack itself is “pretty disgusting,” as one police reporter noted. “It’s not the Ritz.” But having a desk inside police headquarters has offered crucial access to key players that some fear will be cut off in the move outside. “The concern is: Is this a good faith attempt to make more space for whoever they need to make more space for? Or is this a slippery slope, where we’re going to be eventually pushed out altogether from this area?” said a second police reporter. Sheppard, I’m told, has previously mentioned to reporters that he doesn’t get a fair shake from the tabloids. The move to the trailer comes “against a backdrop of complaints about the coverage of crime,” one veteran crime reporter said, which has “raised everybody’s antenna.” A third police reporter added: “Everybody feels it’s somewhat troublesome, like this is a punitive thing for negative coverage—particularly tabloid coverage.”
The rollout of the move has been a major source of frustration among police reporters, who say that DCPI has not provided an official briefing to the group. Reporters who weren’t in on Monday didn’t realize a tour was even taking place. “There’s been no direct communication with all of us at the same time about what’s happening,” said the first police reporter. The line of reasoning for the move, they added, “has been all over the place.” Whether the move actually happens, or starts to happen, on Monday is somewhat unclear, as a third police reporter told me that DCPI has pulled back on Monday due to logistical matters.
In a statement, a DCPI spokesperson said the move will begin “early next week” and disputed the idea that reporters are in the dark about the transition. “Sheppard previously met and spoke with representatives from each media outlet that occupies the existing press area inside Police Headquarters and explained that the move is simply to accommodate additional outlets that have asked to cover the NYPD in the same manner,” the spokesperson said, adding that the new location is “much larger, contains private conference rooms and bathrooms,” and is “located literally feet from the building, still very much inside the secure perimeter of One Police Plaza.” (One of the reporters I spoke to admitted the trailer was “way better” than they expected. It resembles a “semi-permanent module attached to HQ. We’d still be able to go in and out, our badges would work from what I’m told,” they said, adding, “but again, we still don’t have anything official from DCPI.”)
The DCPI spokesperson also disputed the idea that the move is in any way a response to negative coverage. “Change is sometimes difficult for people, we understand. But this is hardly punitive by any stretch of the imagination. This is a planned move—in the works since the start of the current administration—toward greater NYPD transparency, to allow more access to more reporters from more media outlets that desire to cover the police department on an increasing basis.”
It’s not the first time that the future of the Shack, which has been at 1 Police Plaza since the building was erected in the 1970s, has hung in the balance. Other commissioners have tried to evict reporters, such as in 2009, under Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. The removal of the press offices seemed so assured that The Times wrote an entire obituary for the hub, only for department officials to backtrack on the eviction. A few months later, reporters were relocated down the hall to what is the current Shack. “Over the years, as papers and the news media sort of contracted, people in the Shack diminished,” said the veteran crime reporter. “Outlets that had four or five reporters were down to two or one; some were no longer there.”
Lawyers representing the various media organizations with offices in police HQ have been communicating with each other in light of the impending move, according to several reporters. “What can they really do? It’s the NYPD’s property,” the second police reporter noted. The media lawyers’ role in this is more to “show resistance,” said the third police reporter, “so that the next move is not out on the street.”
“Reporters should be in a newsroom collaborating with their fellow reporters, or they should be in a statehouse, in city hall, in police departments,” said the first police reporter. “Meeting and greeting and talking to people and getting the buzz. Isolating people like this is just another way of siloing the public—and that’s who we are, we’re representatives of the public. I think that they forget that.”
Charlotte Klein
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