04/16/2014
NEW YORK — A special New York Police Department unit that sparked controversy by tracking the daily lives of Muslims in an effort to detect terror threats has been disbanded, police officials said Tuesday.
NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis confirmed that detectives assigned to the unit had been transferred to other duties within the department’s Intelligence Division.
In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, called the move “a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys.”
There was no immediate reaction from any of the representatives of Islamic organizations in North Jersey, who had objected strenuously to what was once called the Demographics Unit and its assigned mission of infiltrating Muslim student groups and mosques — and even listening in on conversations in public places, like restaurants.
Many of the activities of the Demographics Unit were carried out in places where Muslims lived, worshiped and gathered outside New York City, notably in such North Jersey cities as Paterson and Newark.
Officers in the unit even recorded license plate numbers, mounted cameras on light poles, mapped and photographed mosques, listed ethnic makeup of businesses in police reports and monitored student websites and emails.
The existence of the New York police spying program, first revealed by The Associated Press, had come as a surprise to local Muslim leaders, who expressed shock when they also learned that New Jersey authorities had cooperated with the program.
Mohamed El Filali, the executive director of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, said at the time that New Jersey law enforcement officials had denied even knowing about New York’s program. “They have denied it all along,” he said. “We don’t spy on you guys. We don’t help people spy on you. They would come in and break bread with us.”
Earlier this year, a judge in U.S. District Court in Newark dismissed a lawsuit against the New York police by a national Muslim civil rights organization, holding that any real harm to Muslims came not from the secret spying program, but from the press reports about it.
The organization appealed the decision last month and is awaiting the outcome.
A review of the unit — renamed the Zone Assessment Unit in recent years — under new Police Commissioner William Bratton found that the same demographic information could be better collected through direct contact with community groups, officials said.
New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman hailed the decision, saying police-community relations took a blow from the unit’s broad surveillance of Muslims, not just people suspected of wrongdoing.
“We hope this means an end to the dragnet approach to policing that has been so harmful to police-community relations and a commitment to going after criminal suspicion, rather than innocent New Yorkers,” said Lieberman, whose organization is involved in lawsuits over the practice.
In Washington, 34 members of Congress had demanded a federal investigation into the NYPD’s actions. Attorney General Eric Holder said he was disturbed by reports about the operations, and the Department of Justice said it was reviewing complaints received from Muslims and their supporters.
The AP’s reporting also prompted an investigation by the CIA’s inspector general. That internal inquiry concluded that the CIA, which is prohibited from domestic spying, hadn’t broken any laws, but criticized the agency for allowing an officer assigned to the NYPD to operate without sufficient supervision.
Then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had defended the spying tactics, saying officers observed legal guidelines.
The NYPD’s decision to disband the unit was first reported in The New York Times.
Staff Writer Jim Norman contributed to this article, which contains material from The Associated Press.
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NEW YORK — A special New York Police Department unit that sparked controversy by tracking the daily lives of Muslims in an effort to detect terror threats has been disbanded, police officials said Tuesday.
NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis confirmed that detectives assigned to the unit had been transferred to other duties within the department’s Intelligence Division.
In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, called the move “a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys.”
There was no immediate reaction from any of the representatives of Islamic organizations in North Jersey, who had objected strenuously to what was once called the Demographics Unit and its assigned mission of infiltrating Muslim student groups and mosques — and even listening in on conversations in public places, like restaurants.
Many of the activities of the Demographics Unit were carried out in places where Muslims lived, worshiped and gathered outside New York City, notably in such North Jersey cities as Paterson and Newark.
Officers in the unit even recorded license plate numbers, mounted cameras on light poles, mapped and photographed mosques, listed ethnic makeup of businesses in police reports and monitored student websites and emails.
The existence of the New York police spying program, first revealed by The Associated Press, had come as a surprise to local Muslim leaders, who expressed shock when they also learned that New Jersey authorities had cooperated with the program.
Mohamed El Filali, the executive director of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, said at the time that New Jersey law enforcement officials had denied even knowing about New York’s program. “They have denied it all along,” he said. “We don’t spy on you guys. We don’t help people spy on you. They would come in and break bread with us.”
Earlier this year, a judge in U.S. District Court in Newark dismissed a lawsuit against the New York police by a national Muslim civil rights organization, holding that any real harm to Muslims came not from the secret spying program, but from the press reports about it.
The organization appealed the decision last month and is awaiting the outcome.
A review of the unit — renamed the Zone Assessment Unit in recent years — under new Police Commissioner William Bratton found that the same demographic information could be better collected through direct contact with community groups, officials said.
New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman hailed the decision, saying police-community relations took a blow from the unit’s broad surveillance of Muslims, not just people suspected of wrongdoing.
“We hope this means an end to the dragnet approach to policing that has been so harmful to police-community relations and a commitment to going after criminal suspicion, rather than innocent New Yorkers,” said Lieberman, whose organization is involved in lawsuits over the practice.
In Washington, 34 members of Congress had demanded a federal investigation into the NYPD’s actions. Attorney General Eric Holder said he was disturbed by reports about the operations, and the Department of Justice said it was reviewing complaints received from Muslims and their supporters.
The AP’s reporting also prompted an investigation by the CIA’s inspector general. That internal inquiry concluded that the CIA, which is prohibited from domestic spying, hadn’t broken any laws, but criticized the agency for allowing an officer assigned to the NYPD to operate without sufficient supervision.
Then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had defended the spying tactics, saying officers observed legal guidelines.
The NYPD’s decision to disband the unit was first reported in The New York Times.
Staff Writer Jim Norman contributed to this article, which contains material from The Associated Press.
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