Barbara Handschu

Barbara Ellen Handschu (born June 28, 1942) is an American political activist and lawyer whose surname was memorialized on a set of federal guidelines "[ordering] restrictions on police surveillance ... signed by the city [of New York] in 1985", which became known as the Handschu decree.

Handschu graduated from New York University and the University of Michigan Law School, but began her career as a law secretary to Justice Hilda Schwartz until her 1969 arrest at a squatters' demonstration in Manhattan caused her to switch careers to criminal defense lawyer.

Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr., the federal judge who signed off on the guidelines in 1985 "relaxed them, ostensibly to assist antiterrorism detection" in 2003. In 2005, the same year Handschu herself appeared at an anti-Iraq War protest, Judge Haight ordered the NYPD "in a 51-page order ... to change its surveillance practices at events where people gather to exercise their First Amendment rights".

Personal life

She was an activist lawyer, representing, among others, the Young Lords of Spanish Harlem (to one of whom, Robert Lemus, she was briefly married), the Black Panthers, the Chicago Seven and participants in the Attica Prison riots.

She had been a resident of Buffalo, New York, and now is exclusively practising matrimonial and custody law in New York City; she no longer practices criminal law. She was the first female president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

See also

• Police Surveillance of Political Activity -- The History and Current State of the Handschu Decree. Testimony of Arthur N. Eisenberg Presented to the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. New York Civil Liberties Union (May 21, 2003).
• "Making Police Obey the Rules That Bear Her Name". The New York Times. February 23, 2007. p. B2.

External links

• March 24, 2007 N.Y. Times article, Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention about revelations of NYPD violations of the Handschu agreement leading up to and during the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City.