The NYPD has agreed to allow an independent monitor to oversee its secret counterterrorism investigations to ensure that the police aren’t illegally gathering intelligence on political or religious activity.
Until just a few weeks ago, the NYPD had argued that their spying was above-board—despite two Gothamist reports detailing how a female undercover detective infiltrated student groups for Muslims and people of color at Brooklyn College. Though the detective maintained her cover for years, at least until early 2015, none of the students were charged with any wrongdoing.
Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street protesters also reported being watched and questioned by the police with no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Today’s agreement will place an independent attorney appointed by the mayor on a committee that will review investigations like these, and explicitly prohibits NYPD investigations where “race, religion, or ethnicity is the substantial or motivating factor.”
The agreement also settles two lawsuits: Raza v. City of New York, which was filed in part by the NYCLU in 2013 after a series of AP reports revealed the NYPD’s blanket surveillance of Muslims in New York, and Handschu v. City of New York, filed in 1971 to stop the NYPD’s “Red Squads” from spying on political groups like the Blank Panthers.
“This has always been about whoever is the other of the moment, the suspicion-raising other in society. It’s been the Jew, the Italian, the Communist and African-Americans at various stages,” Jethro Eisenstein, one of the original attorneys on the Handschu case, told the Times.
The Handschu litigation had been guiding the NYPD’s surveillance activities in New York City, which included independent oversight, until the NYPD argued and won its removal after the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001.
The City admits no wrongdoing in the settlements (which still have to be approved by a judge), but they do restore much of the oversight lost after 9/11.
“We have nothing to hide,” Lawrence Byrne, NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters told the Times. “And if this adds transparency and a level of public trust that we’re continuing to keep the city safe, but in a lawful way, we welcome and embrace that.”
Arthur Eisenberg, the NYCLU’s legal director and lead attorney in the Handschu suit, said in a statement, “This settlement is a win for all New Yorkers. It will curtail practices that wrongly stigmatize individuals simply on the basis of their religion, race or ethnicity. At the same time, the NYPD's investigative practices will be rendered more effective by focusing on criminal behavior.”
A similar suit to Raza, filed in New Jersey against the NYPD (the NYPD spied on Muslims all over the east coast) by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Muslim Advocates, Hassan v. City of New York, is still set to be litigated.
You can read the changes to the Handschu guidelines below, courtesy of a release from the NYPD.
