While presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg apologized for the stop-and-frisk policing policy that he oversaw as mayor of New York City, he continues to defend — and is making misleading statements about — the coordinated NYPD surveillance of Muslims at mosques, schools and businesses during that same period.
During most of Bloomberg’s 12 years in office, the NYPD’s Demographics Unit secretly surveilled Muslims at mosques, colleges, and even hookah bars in New York, New Jersey, and beyond in an effort to prevent further terrorist attacks. Police dispatched “mosque crawlers” to listen to sermons and take pictures of worshipers, and sent informants to join Muslim college groups.
The surveillance, revealed by a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press investigation, created a climate a fear in Muslim communities, according to Muslim leaders. And yet according to the NYPD, the tactic yielded not a single lead that led to a terrorist investigation.
That’s not how Bloomberg is describing it. Bloomberg has mischaracterized how judges viewed the operation, falsely claimed that imams invited police into mosques to spy on congregants, and framed the surveillance as more limited than it was.
The Surveillance Wasn’t Voluntary
When approached by a voter, he claimed the NYPD’s so-called Demographics Unit “only went in when the mosque or imam asked us to go in.” In fact, the whole operation was predicated on secretly monitoring mosques, imams, and Muslim groups.
“We sent some officers into some mosques to listen to the sermon that the imam gave,” Bloomberg acknowledged last week on PBS NewsHour. “The courts ruled it was exactly within the law and that’s the kind of thing we should be doing.”
But although a lower court judge threw out an initial lawsuit claiming civil rights violations, a federal appeals court ruling later compared the surveillance program to the treatment of Jewish-Americans during the Red Scare, African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement, and Japanese-Americans during World War II. The panel said “individual disloyalty” was falsely deemed indicative of “group disloyalty.”
In 2017, after Bloomberg left office, the NYPD settled three lawsuits over the issue. While it did not have to admit wrongdoing, it paid more than $1 million in damages and legal fees.
Most significantly, those settlements imposed new oversight and controls on the NYPD to prevent future investigations that focus on religion. There’s now a civilian representative on an internal NYPD committee that reviews investigations, and there are new limits on the use of undercover informants and the length of time that police can investigate a mosque without filing charges. Race, religion, and ethnicity are no longer allowed to be triggering factors in investigations.
This image made on from a New York Police Department, Intelligence Division, Demographics Unit document titled "Syrian Locations of Concern Report" shows an entry on a mosque in the Bronx borough of New York. The New York Police Department kept secret files on businesses owned by second- and third-generation Americans specifically because they were Muslims, according to newly obtained documents that spell out in the clearest terms yet that police were monitoring people based on religion.
The Surveillance Was Discriminatory
Still, in the PBS NewsHour interview, Bloomberg defended the NYPD’s rationale for the now-banned method of targeting Muslims, noting that he came into office shortly after the Sept. 11th attacks.
“There’s no question about where the people who commited the terrible atrocities of the three airplane crashes and all the people getting killed, where they came from — and [mosques are] a natural place to go,” Bloomberg said.
Anchor Judy Woodruff asked if he meant that it’s okay to target a religion.
“You have to step back, Judy, and understand that we had 3,000 people killed, in a few minutes...all of the people came from the same place,” Bloomberg said, despite the fact that the Sept. 11 terrorists came from four different countries. “They happened to be from one religion. And if they had been from another religion we would have done the same thing.”
Notably, judges viewed this targeting as religious discrimination.
The Surveillance Was Total
Also contrary to what Bloomberg claimed, surveillance went beyond “some mosques.” According to a report by the CUNY School of Law, an undercover officer went along on a whitewater rafting trip and documented how often Muslim college students prayed; others noted which business in Newark sold halal products.
“The idea that the NYPD surveilled Muslims in just a few mosques with court approval is a fantasy,” said Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, which filed the lawsuit resulting in the settlement. “In reality, the NYPD filmed, tracked and monitored Muslims in mosques, restaurants, schools and more with cameras and undercover officers — all without their knowledge, in New York and New Jersey.”
Bloomberg campaign officials did not return requests for comment.
Like stop-and-frisk, Muslim surveillance had broad ramifications. A documentary film, Watched, details how an undercover police officer known as “Mel” infiltrated Muslim groups at Brooklyn College for nearly four years, leaving students traumatized once they learned her real identity.
Another Brooklyn College student, Asad Dandia, started a group called Muslims Giving Back that was infiltrated by another NYPD informant. After the surveillance was revealed, the group lost donations and volunteers.
“One of the reasons he’s not apologizing about it is because he’s truly not remorseful,” Dandia said of the former mayor in an interview Monday. “This man who caused enormous harm in Muslim communities is allowed to buy his way to where he is now, and that’s really frustrating a lot of people.”
The most immediate ramifications of the surveillance was a chilling of constitutionally protected activities, Dandia said, as mosque attendance dropped and Muslims feared organizing politically.
But the effects are still evident. Before Dandia knew the informant’s identity, the man became close with his family.
“He slept over at my place. He ate food cooked by my mom. He got to know my family,” Dandia said. “So when it came up that he was a spy and informant, my parents were very traumatized. And to this day they ask me to make sure I know who I’m befriending so it doesn’t happen again, because they dont want me or us to go through that one more time.”
Dandia's attorney, Ramzi Kassem, told WNYC in 2017 that as a result of the surveillance program, some Muslim New Yorkers refused to report crime “because they don’t want the NYPD to try to recruit them to become an informant.”
“There's deep distrust for the NYPD's motivations in these communities because of this program, just like there's deep distrust of the black and Latino communities because of stop-and-frisk," said Kassem.
Matt Katz reports on air at WNYC about immigration, refugees, and national security.
You can follow him on Twitter at @mattkatz00.
