Since 2001 the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have pumped $135 million into the NY/NJ region under the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, a portion of which went into the NYPD's controversial surveillance program targeting Muslims in the Northeast. According to the AP, it's unclear how much of that money went towards surveillance "because the program has little oversight," but cars used by the department's plainclothes officers in keeping tabs on Muslim communities were paid for with federal money, as were the computers used to compile the reports for Commissioner Kelly.
Last year, John Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism advisor, said the NYPD was doing a "heroic job…in an exceptionally good way, to protect the citizens of New York City on a daily basis." The DOJ's top civil liberties attorney, Tom Perez, has declined to speak about the NYPD's practices. Chauncey Parker, HIDTA's director in the NY/NJ region told the news outlet that less than $1.3 million of the program's money was spent by the NYPD on vehicles, but did not comment further.
In an interview with Rep. Peter King this morning, Kelly said he thought the media's use of the word "spying" to describe his department's work "a pejorative term," and noted that it wasn't just New York City that was benefiting from the surveillance. "It would be folly for us to focus only on the five boroughs of New York. We have to use all of our resources to protect everyone. We're protecting the metropolitan area."
