New York Police Commissioner has been grilled by city council members over targeting Muslim neighborhoods in police surveillance, amid calls of putting under oversight the department that has become the most aggressive domestic intelligence agency in the US. “It looks like we are targeting Muslim neighborhoods and communities,” Councilman Brad Lander said during the council hearing, The New York Times reported on Friday, October 7.
“That’s not good for us. We have people out there who are partners who feel the trust is betrayed.” At the hearing planned to question Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, several council members tried to pierce the secrecy that has largely surrounded the operations of the Intelligence Division, one of the department’s entities involved in counterterrorism investigations. Lasting for over an hour, the hearing was made before an audience of Muslim organizers, civil liberties lawyers and others.
The questioning revolved around NYPD surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods and mosque areas identified by police as “hot spots”. The case erupted last month after the Associated Press revealed that the New York Police sent out undercover officers into ethnic communities to track daily life and monitor mosques as well as Muslim student organizations. The report also revealed that NYPD intelligence had established so-called Demographics Unit using plainclothes police officers to monitor ethnic groups in the metropolitan region. Facing grilling questioning, Kelly struck a defiant tone, defending his surveillance methods a being conducted only in the context of an investigation.
“What we’re doing is following leads,” he said. Kelly confirmed that a squad called the Demographics Unit, now under the Zone Assessment Unit, mapped not just the city’s Muslim population, but also “a lot of different communities.” That assertion prompted a question from Councilman Daniel Dromm, who asked whether officers had cataloged the city’s Irish, as well. Kelly denied such claims and said that information was compiled not based on ethnicity but on “geography.” Review During the hearing, the city council members raised the possibility of conducting outside review when the police intend to conduct undercover surveillance as part of counterterrorism investigations.
“Without some more independent oversight to figure out what the standards are, it’s hard to believe we’re getting the balance between civil liberties and protection right,” Councilman Lander said.
The hearing stoke emotions over cases in which US Muslims were targeted in undercover surveillance. The council members cited the case of a well-regarded Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, imam had been tracked by the police. Responding on the case, Kelly said, “I’m not speaking on any specific cases.” Last September, CIA launched an investigation into cooperation with NYPD to spy on American Muslims.
The investigation was to focus on the work of a CIA adviser at the New York Police Department (NYPD) helping counter-terrorism efforts. On that issue, Kelly said that a CIA employee “works with us” as an adviser, “he doesn’t have access to our investigative files.
” Earlier this year, a report criticizing the tactic of US law enforcement agencies in sending paid informants into mosques to instigate and trap Muslims into terror plots was issued by New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. The report, themed “Targeted and Entrapped: Manufacturing the ‘Homegrown Threat’, criticized the government’s tactic of sending informants into mosques to entrap Muslims into terror plots.
It cited three high-profile domestic terrorism prosecutions which raised question marks about the role of the FBI and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in creating the perception of “homegrown” terrorism. New York is home to some 800,000 Muslims, about 10 percent of the city’s population.
There are about 100 mosques throughout New York’s five boroughs. The United States is home to an estimated Muslim minority of six to eight million.
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