Re: the NYPL Surveillance Exhibition We Saw @ the Municipal Archives

An article in the Times regarding the exhibition we saw at the Municipal Archives:

To Thomas A. Reppetto, an author and police historian, the very fact of the exhibit — “Unlikely Historians: Materials Collected by NYPD Surveillance Teams, 1960–1975” — is evidence of how much times have changed. Years ago, he said, a city agency would have been hard-pressed to stage an exhibition that resurrected the memory of provocative police practices.

“The police would not have wanted to do it,” Mr. Reppetto said. “The police would never have agreed to it, and if the police didn’t agree, it wouldn’t be done.”

Mr. Reppetto is no fan of the exhibit, suggesting that making intelligence material public can often reveal sensitive tactics. But curators say they received no objections from the Police Department or City Hall while they were putting the exhibit together. In fact, among the visitors to the exhibit has been Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill. (A police spokesman did not respond to a question seeking the commissioner’s thoughts on the images.)

The show, which opened last month, includes 30 photographs and seven film segments created while the police Photo Unit was working with investigative bureaus like the now-defunct Special Services Division, whose members monitored groups they deemed to be dangerous or subversive.

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