New York police monitored Muslim students at Rutgers University, other colleges

[luckytxn 2,264]

Bars, pardon my clumsy fingers. Typing on an iPod touch can be tricky at times.

Whew. I was trying to fathom why they take them behind bats. It is NYPD though.

[Ban Hammer 13,427]

Important excerpt: "...NYPD Intelligence operations have stopped a number of terrorist plots and put several would-be terrorists behind bats."

Translation: go NYPD!

they made them play for the yankees?

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Looks like the NYPD's Muslim-monitoring operation extended far beyond New York City. And looks like they didn't even bother to inform the local jurisdictions:

For months in mid-2007, plainclothes officers from the NYPD's Demographics Units fanned out across Newark, taking pictures and eavesdropping on conversations inside businesses owned or frequented by Muslims.

The result was a 60-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, containing brief summaries of businesses and their clientele. Police also photographed and mapped 16 mosques, listing them as "Islamic Religious Institutions."

The report cited no evidence of terrorism or criminal behavior. It was a guide to Newark's Muslims.

According to the report, the operation was carried out in collaboration with the Newark Police Department, which at the time was run by a former high-ranking NYPD official. But Newark's mayor, Cory Booker, said he never authorized the spying and was never told about it.

"Wow," he said as the AP laid out the details of the report. "This raises a number of concerns. It's just very, very sobering."

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/wn_022212a.html

Booker said he had been unaware of the undercover work and the Newark Police Department - which had been contacted by the NYPD early on - had not been involved in any joint operations.

"What we are discovering appears to be an NYPD operation in our city that involved the blanket surveillance of Newark residents and workers based solely on the religion of those individuals," he said. "If this is indeed what transpired, it is, I believe, a clear infringement on the core liberties of our citizenry."

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/02/leaked_secret_report_details_h.html

Yale University was not too happy about it either:

Yale President Richard Levin was among a number of academics who condemned the effort Monday, while Rutgers University and leaders of Muslim student groups elsewhere called for investigations into the monitoring.

"I am writing to state, in the strongest possible terms, that police surveillance based on religion, nationality, or peacefully expressed political opinions is antithetical to the values of Yale, the academic community, and the United States."

http://www.usatoday.com/USCP/PNI/Nation/World/2012-02-22-BCUSNYPD-IntelligenceUniversities4th-Ld_ST_U.htm

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Booh and a hearty hooh. Getting ones panties in a bunch over this seems silly on two fronts:

1) the NYPD operation yielded actual results, meaning there was in fact some basis for having a reasonable suspicion monitoring Muslim student organizations, mosques and businesses was not completely without merit.

2) the fact that most of the monitoring was ultimately a bust helps bolster the claims of non-Radical Muslims that they are in fact non-Radical.

Edited February 25, 2012 by ready4ONE

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Booh and a hearty hooh. Getting ones panties in a bunch over this seems silly on two fronts:

1) the NYPD operation yielded actual results, meaning there was in fact some basis for having a reasonable suspicion monitoring Muslim student organizations, mosques and businesses was not completely without merit.

2) the fact that most of the monitoring was ultimately a bust helps bolster the claims of non-Radical Muslims that they are in fact non-Radical.

The AP keeps releasing more and more, bit by bit...

At the Masjid Al-Falah in Queens, one leader condemned the cartoons but said Muslims should not resort to violence. Speaking at the Masjid Dawudi mosque in Brooklyn, another called on Muslims to speak out against the cartoons, but peacefully.

The sermons, all protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution, were reported back to the NYPD by the department's network of mosque informants. They were compiled in police intelligence reports and summarized for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Those documents offer the first glimpse of what the NYPD's informants — known informally as "mosque crawlers" — gleaned from inside the houses of worship. And, along with hundreds of pages of other secret NYPD documents obtained by The Associated Press, they show police targeting mosques and their congregations with tactics normally reserved for criminal organizations.

They did so in ways that brushed against — and civil rights lawyers say at times violated — a federal court order restricting how police can gather intelligence.

The NYPD Intelligence Division snapped pictures and collected license plate numbers of congregants as they arrived to pray. Police mounted cameras on light poles and aimed them at mosques. Plainclothes detectives mapped and photographed mosques and listed the ethnic makeup of those who prayed there.

"It seems horrible to me that the NYPD is treating an entire religious community as potential terrorists," said civil rights lawyer Jethro Eisenstein, who reviewed some of the documents and is involved in a decades-old, class-action lawsuit against the police department for spying on protesters and political dissidents. The lawsuit is known as the Handschu case.

The documents provide a fuller picture of the NYPD's unapologetic approach to protecting the city from terrorism. Eisenstein said he believes that at least one document, the summary of statements about the Danish cartoons, showed that the NYPD is not following a court order that prohibits police from compiling records on people who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights.

...

Police put the names of students and academics in reports even when they were not suspected of wrongdoing. And in Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker said he was offended by the NYPD's secret surveillance of his city's Muslims.

After the AP revelations, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to look into the NYPD operation in Newark. U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ), said the NYPD shouldn't be operating in New Jersey without notifying local and federal authorities.

In a statement, Pascrell said profiling was wrong: "We must focus on behavioral profiling rather ethnic or religious profiling."

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not respond to an email seeking comment. Browne has previously denied the NYPD used mosque crawlers or that there was a secret Demographics Unit that monitored daily life in Muslim communities.

At a press event on Thursday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to answer questions about the NYPD's activities.

...

"If there are threats or leads to follow, then the NYPD's job is to do it," Bloomberg said last year. "The law is pretty clear about what's the requirement, and I think they follow the law. We don't stop to think about the religion. We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there."

But former and current law enforcement officials either involved in or with direct knowledge of these programs say they did not follow leads. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret programs. But the documents support their claims.

Officials say that David Cohen, the deputy commissioner for intelligence, was at the center of the efforts to spy on the mosques.

"Take a big net, throw it out, catch as many fish as you can and see what we get," one investigator recalled Cohen saying.

Using plainclothes officers from the Demographics Unit, police swept Muslim neighborhoods and catalogued the location of mosques, identifying them on maps with crescent moon icons, the well-known symbol of Islam.

...

In some instances, the NYPD put cameras on light poles and trained them on mosques, documents show. Investigators could control the cameras with their computers and use the footage to help identify worshippers. Because the cameras were in public space, police didn't need a warrant to conduct the surveillance.

If the NYPD badly wanted to know who was attending the mosque, they could write down the license plates of cars in the mosque parking lots, documents show. In some instances, police in unmarked cars outfitted with electronic license plate readers would drive down the street and record the plates of everyone parked near the mosque.

...

In 2006, the NYPD ordered surveillance at the Masjid Omar, a mosque in Paterson, N.J., a document shows. There's no indication that the surveillance team was looking for anyone in particular. The mosque itself was the target.

"This is reportedly to be a mosque that is attended by both Palestinian and Chechen worshipers," the document reads. "This mosque has a long history in the community and is believed to have been the subject of federal Investigations." Federal law enforcement officials told the AP that the mosque itself was never under federal investigation and they were unaware the NYPD was monitoring it so closely.

Police were instructed to watch the mosque and, as people came and went from the Friday prayer service, investigators were to record license plates and photograph and videotape those attending.

"Pay special attention to all NY State license plates," the document said.

The brief file offered no evidence of criminal activity.

To conduct such broad surveillance as the NYPD did at Masjid Omar, FBI agents would need to believe that the mosque itself was part of a criminal enterprise. Even then, federal agents would need approval from senior FBI and Justice Department officials.

At the NYPD, however, such monitoring was common, former police officials said.

...

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/wn_022312b.html

[luckytxn 2,264]

Booh and a hearty hooh. Getting ones panties in a bunch over this seems silly on two fronts:

1) the NYPD operation yielded actual results, meaning there was in fact some basis for having a reasonable suspicion monitoring Muslim student organizations, mosques and businesses was not completely without merit.

2) the fact that most of the monitoring was ultimately a bust helps bolster the claims of non-Radical Muslims that they are in fact non-Radical.

Please tell us what results were yelded.

So what you are saying then every citizen should be monitored to see if they are being law abiding. Since the NYPD used cameras and spies and recordings of everything then I am wondering if you think this surveillance should include inside the homes also. Never know what laws can be broken inside the home.

[sandinista! 1,816]

Maybe every male at every university should be stalked and filmed and wire tapped just to make sure they aren't rapists. Rapes could be prevented, and ultimately it could help bolster non rapist guys' claims that they aren't rapists. Since not every male is a rapist, but nearly every rapist is male and all that.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Actually what I am saying, and what one Muslim in the OP stated as well, is that there was sound reason to suspect Radical Islamists would, have tried, did, and likely still are, seeking to blend into the general Islamic population, recruiting, trying to infiltrate etc. the non-radical Muslim majority. Some of them were caught in NYPD operations, some of their plots were thwarted, protecting not just non-Muslims but Muslims as well. And like the gent in the OP, I for one am grateful for their efforts.

And the fact remains the majority of Muslims scrutinized turned out to be quite innocent of Radical Muslim/terrorist activity. That lends a lot of credibility to the claims, honestly made, that most Muslims in this country are neither terrorists, nor have terrorist sympathies. That's a good thing, point general Muslim population.

[luckytxn 2,264]

Actually what I am saying, and what one Muslim in the OP stated as well, is that there was sound reason to suspect Radical Islamists would, have tried, did, and likely still are, seeking to blend into the general Islamic population, recruiting, trying to infiltrate etc. the non-radical Muslim majority. Some of them were caught in NYPD operations, some of their plots were thwarted, protecting not just non-Muslims but Muslims as well. And like the gent in the OP, I for one am grateful for their efforts.

And the fact remains the majority of Muslims scrutinized turned out to be quite innocent of Radical Muslim/terrorist activity. That lends a lot of credibility to the claims, honestly made, that most Muslims in this country are neither terrorists, nor have terrorist sympathies. That's a good thing, point general Muslim population.

From what I read this monitoring didn't seem to bring anyone to justice. In fact there was no reason at all to suspect any of these of wrongdoing to warrant being under surveillance. To monitor not just the mosques but any that entered or exited and recorded the vehicles licenses and other stuff was not warranted at all from anything I have read so far. Is there something you read somewhere else that you can point us to and show us these people deserved to be shadowed and scrutinized?

Is just being a Muslim reason to warrant this intrusion?

[luckytxn 2,264]

Maybe every male at every university should be stalked and filmed and wire tapped just to make sure they aren't rapists. Rapes could be prevented, and ultimately it could help bolster non rapist guys' claims that they aren't rapists. Since not every male is a rapist, but nearly every rapist is male and all that.

Yeah and lets carry it further and make sure we monitor the woman also. No telling what they may do. We have to be sure that everyone is treated equally here. The best part is that the ones that were found to be good can say they are and we all know it because we monitored them so closely. That makes it OK.

[Ban Hammer 13,427]

seems that nypd never heard of "jurisdiction" since they were so far out of it.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

From what I read this monitoring didn't seem to bring anyone to justice. In fact there was no reason at all to suspect any of these of wrongdoing to warrant being under surveillance. To monitor not just the mosques but any that entered or exited and recorded the vehicles licenses and other stuff was not warranted at all from anything I have read so far. Is there something you read somewhere else that you can point us to and show us these people deserved to be shadowed and scrutinized?

Is just being a Muslim reason to warrant this intrusion?

Exactly. Look at what the investigation "found":

At the Masjid Al-Falah in Queens, one leader condemned the cartoons but said Muslims should not resort to violence. Speaking at the Masjid Dawudi mosque in Brooklyn, another called on Muslims to speak out against the cartoons, but peacefully

.

...the informants reported on more than a dozen conversations inside mosques.

Some suggested boycotting Danish products, burning flags, contacting politicians and holding rallies — all permissible under the law.

"Imam Shamsi Ali brought up the topic of the cartoon, condemning them. He announced a rally that was to take place on Sunday (02/05/06) near the United Nations. He asked that everyone to attend if possible and reminded everyone to keep their poise if they can make it," according to a report prepared for Kelly.

At the Muslim Center Of New York in Queens, the report said, "Mohammad Tariq Sherwani led the prayer service and urged those in attendance to participate in a demonstration at the United Nations on Sunday."

The closest anyone in the report came to espousing violence was one man who, in a conversation with an NYPD informant, said the cartoons showed the West was at war with Islam. Asked what Muslims should do, he replied, "inqilab," an Arabic word that means changing the political system. Depending on the context, that can mean peacefully or through an upheaval like a coup. The report, which spelled the word "Inqlab," said the informant translated it as "fight" but the report does not elaborate further.

Even when it was clear there were no links to terrorism, the mosque informants gave the NYPD the ability to "take the pulse" of the community, as Cohen and other managers called it.

When New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor were killed Oct. 11, 2006, when their small plane crashed into a Manhattan high-rise apartment, fighter planes were scrambled. Within hours the FBI and Department of Homeland Security said it was an accident. Terrorism was ruled out.

Yet for days after the event, the NYPD's mosque crawlers reported to police about what they heard at sermons and among worshippers.

At the Brooklyn Islamic Center, a confidential informant "noted chatter among the regulars expressing relief and thanks to God that the crash was only an accident and not an act of terrorism, which they stated would not be good either for the U.S. or for any of their home countries."

Across the Hudson River in Jersey City, an undercover officer reported a pair of worshippers at the Al-Tawheed Islamic Center reacted with "sorrow."

"The worshippers made remarks to the effect that 'it better be an accident; we don't need any more heat,'" the officer reported.

Another informant told his handler about a man who became agitated after learning about the crash. The man urged the informant not to go into Manhattan until it was clear what was going on, the informant said.

Five days after the crash, long after concerns that it was terrorism had passed, the NYPD compiled these reports into a memo for Kelly. The report promised to investigate the man who had appeared agitated.

"A phone dump will be conducted on subject's phone for that day and time period," the memo said.

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/wn_022312b.html

They were even marking mosques on the map with little crescent moons, for crying out loud. Maybe we should make Muslims all wear yellow crescent moon patches so everyone can immediately identify them. Just in case.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Maybe every male at every university should be stalked and filmed and wire tapped just to make sure they aren't rapists. Rapes could be prevented, and ultimately it could help bolster non rapist guys' claims that they aren't rapists. Since not every male is a rapist, but nearly every rapist is male and all that.

Almost. If there were a high incidence of rapes on a given campus would you not want law enforcement to step up patrols? Get more pro-active to try and prevent future rapes?

And if said mythical campus experiencing said mythical spate of rapes had a consistent perpetrator description, and that description for better or worse was uniformly a specific minority, would you, in the interest of not offending that minority, insist law enforcement look at all males regardless of knowing from victim statements most could be eliminated on that characteristic alone?

I think you are viewing this wrong. Radical Muslims strategy has been to seek recruits and hide amongst the greater Muslim community. Sadly we have concrete instances proving the succes of this strategy, and a delicate balancing act going on trying to prevent this activity while not offending or abusing the rights of the greater Muslim community.

seems that nypd never heard of "jurisdiction" since they were so far out of it.

The flipside being how careful terrorists are to stay only within one jurisdictional boundary when hatching their plots. Right?

[luckytxn 2,264]

Exactly. Look at what the investigation "found":

.

http://www.ap.org/pa...wn_022312b.html

They were even marking mosques on the map with little crescent moons, for crying out loud. Maybe we should make Muslims all wear yellow crescent moon patches so everyone can immediately identify them. Just in case.

So the investigation was launched because some Muslims were advocating peaceful practices?

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

So the investigation was launched because some Muslims were advocating peaceful practices?

They were suspected of Breathing While Muslim.