NYPD Can Stop People From Filming Inside Stations, Court Says

The New York City Police Department can prohibit people from video recording law enforcement activities inside police stations, the state’s Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

There is no private right to record inside police stationhouses or their public lobbies, Judge Jenny Rivera said for the unanimous court. It’s the first decision to reckon with whether the state’s right-to-record law and a similar New York City law allow people—such as plaintiff SeanPaul Reyes, a YouTuber—to record inside police stations despite a NYPD policy forbidding any video recording inside its facilities.

“Permitting members of the public to record events and individuals in precinct lobbies would violate the privacy interests of crime victims, witnesses, confidential informants, and undercover officers,” she said, also noting that recordings could “jeopardize officers’ strategic responses to criminal activity.”

The laws don’t impose any limitation on where the right to record police activity may be exercised, “providing the who, what, and when but not the where,” Rivera said. “This silence renders both RTRAs ambiguous as to whether the right to record applies in police stationhouses, including publicly accessible precinct lobbies.”

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit asked the state’s high court to opine on the issue as part of a federal case in which Reyes, who runs a YouTube account called Long Island Audit, sued the city for blocking him from recording at two different precincts. Reyes was granted a preliminary injunction in 2023 blocking the NYPD from enforcing its prohibition on recording police activities in publicly accessible areas of its precinct lobbies.

The city argued that if the two laws are found to supersede the NYPD’s recording restrictions, people could record others in their own homes if the police are present, as well as in courthouses, jails, medical facilities, and homeless shelters. T

The NYPD, the city wrote in its brief, has “exercised its authority as a premises owner to forbid members of the public from recording” inside stations.

LatinoJustice PRLDEF represents Reyes.

The case is Reyes v. City of New York, N.Y., No. CTQ-2025-00004, 6/23/26.