The Associated Press can't stop, won't stop reporting on the NYPD's "Demographics Unit," which has been both criticized and praised for conducting widespread surveillance in neighborhoods with significant Muslim populations. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has insisted the NYPD is not racially profiling their surveillance targets, but internal NYPD documents tell a different story: Secret files (below) have been kept on businesses owned by second- and third-generation Americans specifically because they were Muslims, the AP reports.
For example, in 2007, plainclothes officers with the Demographics Unit were assigned to generate intelligence on NYC's Syrian population. They went around taking photos of establishments owned by second and third generation Syrian Americans and documenting who worked there, but their report excluded Jews with Syrian backgrounds. In fact, the NYPD files openly declare: "This report will focus on the smaller Muslim community." Officers did not find any evidence of terror plots, but the information gathered about innocent New Yorkers was kept on file. According to the AP:
If police, for example, ever received a tip that an Egyptian terrorist was plotting an attack, investigators looking for him would have the entire community already on file. They would know where he was likely to pray, who might rent him a cheap room, where he'd find a convenient Internet cafe and where he probably would buy his groceries.
As a result, many people were put into police files, not for criminal activities but because they were part of daily life in their neighborhoods. Shopkeepers were named in police files, their ethnicities listed. Muslim college students who attended a rafting trip or discussed upcoming religious lectures on campus were cataloged. Worshippers arriving at mosques were photographed and had their license plate numbers collected by police.
The NYPD's efforts to monitor and eavesdrop on Egyptian businesses in 2007 similarly excluded the Coptic Christian population. The files seem to contradict the NYPD's assertion that they were not conducting surveillance based on ethnicity or religion, merely following leads. But Mayor Bloomberg recently acknowledged that the investigations were often conducted without any specific lead. "When there's no lead, you're just trying to get familiar with what's going on, where people might go and where people might be to say something," Bloomberg said. "And you want to listen. If they're going to give a public speech, you want to know where they do it."
Today Bloomberg doubled down on the surveillance program and said its critics were just desperate for attention. "You know, it’s a made-for-television thing," the mayor told John Gambling during his regular Friday morning radio show appearance. "It gets you publicity. If you want to talk, there’s somebody willing to stick a microphone or a camera in front of you and put it on the air. I don’t know how much of it’s that." He then proceeded to read from today's Wall Street Journal editorial defending the program, headlined "New York's Finest Are Getting Smeared."
"Criminals often share ethnic backgrounds," the Journal op-ed observes. "For police to look for certain criminals among certain ethnic groups is only logical, and it doesn't suggest a belief that all, or even a significant minority, of that group are criminals." The Times published a dueling editorial today, blasting the NYPD and Bloomberg for being so defensive when critics demand answers about the surveillance program: "Mr. Kelly loudly defends the operation and an exemplary record of preventing terrorist attacks. He should not do that so loudly that he drowns out reasonable criticisms."
