New York, NY —

A federal judge has ordered the NYPD not to videotape political demonstrations unless it is undertaking a criminal investigation approved by police authorities. WNYC's Marianne McCune reports.

REPORTER: This case is about a decade's old dispute regarding when and how police are allowed to investigate political activity - people exercising their right to free speech. Since the September 11th attacks, the NYPD has pushed successfully to loosen the rules, which are part of a court settlement.

But in the latest chapter of the dispute, civil rights attorneys accused police of violating the rules by consistently videotaping protests - one affidavit describes police taping, for example, a Coalition for the Homeless protest in front of the Mayor's residence. Police officials and lawyers for the city argued that kind of videotaping is done for a variety of reasons unrelated to the investigation of political activity.

In a major rebuke to the department, Judge Charles Haight ruled that a protest is by definition political activity and videotaping is by definition investigative. So police must not videotape protests unless they have reason to suspect some crime will occur there.

City officials are still reviewing the 50 page decision.