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Reversing a lower court ruling, a panel of federal judges on

Wednesday decided that the city can keep secret roughly 1,800 pages

of records of police surveillance leading up to the 2004 Republican

National Convention in New York.

The ruling, by a panel of the Unites States Court of Appeals for the

Second Circuit, was a decisive victory for city lawyers, who have been

waging a long fight to keep the Police Departments voluminous

intelligence documents from public view.

Ultimately, the panel concluded that a law enforcement privilege

outweighed the need to open the documents to public scrutiny,according to the 43-page decision written by Judge Jos A. Cabranes.

He was joined in the ruling by two judges, Debra A. Livingston and

Richard C. Wesley.

The documents revolve around the Police Departments deployment

of undercover detectives around the world to gather information on

political activists and others who were planning demonstrations in

the days leading to the summer convention in the city, according to a

sampling of the records reviewed by The New York Times.

Last year, a federal judge rejected the citys attempts to avoid

releasing the documents to the public, affirming a prior conclusion

reached by a federal magistrate judge.

But the Court of Appeals on Wednesday said the lower court made

some errors in its assessment of the matter and concluded, We

vacate the December 10, 2009, order of the district court; and we

instruct the district court to deny plaintiffs motion to compel the

production of the field reports.

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The plaintiffs in the case are represented by the New York Civil

Liberties Union. Lawyers for the civil liberties group have been

representing those swept up in mass arrests on Aug. 31, 2004 the

conventions second day and have been seeking the documents torebut claims by the police that its surveillance operations provided a

legal basis for arresting and detaining people instead of issuing

summonses.

The lawyers have also argued against the departments policy of

fingerprinting people charged with minor offenses.

Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the civil libertiesgroup, said he was reading the court decision on Wednesday

morning.

Celeste Koeleveld, the City Law Departments lead counsel for public

safety, said, We are gratified the court recognized that plaintiffs have

no compelling need for these sensitive materials which reveal the

identities of undercover officers.

She quoted from page 34 of the decision, pointing out that the courtrecognized that the information in the documents in questionreinforced the citys assertions that the public faced a substantialthreat of disruption and violence during the Republican convention.