Two civil rights groups will argue their appeal to overturn a court’s decision that allowed the NYPD to surveil Muslim communities as part of an anti-terrorism campaign. Muslim Advocates and the Center for Constitutional Rights will convene in a Philadelphia courtroom on Tuesday to make their case that the NYPD violated the rights of Muslims by profiling […]
In a broad “anti-terrorism” campaign, the NYPD has been surveilling Muslims without cause. Now, the de Blasio administration is continuing the Bloomberg/Kelly defense of the program. The AP first brought attention to the Demographics Unit — a division of the NYPD given the task of infiltrating mosques, developing relationships with young Muslims and focusing intelligence gathering on “ancestries […]
While researching for her new book about the Young Lords — a radical Puerto Rican 1960’s group that turned militant — Baruch College Professor Johanna Fernandez was surprised to find that the NYPD did not have the records of the group’s surveillance. Fernandez found them all on her own. After discovering many of these documents proving […]
As Azi Paybarah at Capital New York reports, Ray Kelly stopped by the Muslim Day Parade on Madison Avenue yesterday for a photo op with a few attendees. The most bizarre-sounding moment in what must have been an extraordinarily bizarre scene involved–you guessed it–NYPD surveillance of Muslims, and, um, hand drumming. One reporter approached Kelly […]
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NYPD Inspector General Philip Eure started work last week, and to welcome him to the job, Communities United for Police Reform compiled a list of police problems that need fixing. The grievances are sadly predictable: lack of transparency, surveillance of Muslims, excessive force, use of condoms as evidence in sex work cases. The organzation also points […]
It turns out the NYPD’s unwarranted surveillance of New York muslims was worse than anyone initially thought. After 9/11, the department began using a police tool known as a “terrorism enterprise investigation” (TEI) to target entire mosques as potential terrorist groups, allowing the surveillance of any person who attends. According to the AP, TEIs were often […]
Great news: the City Council voted today to override Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vetoes on two bills known collectively as the Community Safety Act. The bills will create an independent Inspector General’s office to oversee the NYPD, make it illegal for cops profile citizens, based on a slew of factors including sexual orientation and housing status, […]
In 2011, the Associated Press published an article detailing the ways the CIA assists the NYPD in its surveillance of the local Muslim community–a practice that’s now being challenged in several high-profile lawsuits. This prompted the CIA’s inspector general, who oversees Agency operations, to begin an investigation into the collaboration, as CIA agents are not […]
Ray Kelly, the commissioner of a police department that’s currently awaiting the decision in a federal trial over the constitutionality of its stop-and-frisk practice, a department that ran a massive program of spying on New York City’s muslim community, made statements condemning the NSA for the secrecy of its phone and electronic communications surveillance programs, […]
