SurveillanceNYPD shuts down controversial Muslim surveillance program
The New York Police Department has shut down its “Demographics Unit,” known for secretly infiltrating Muslim communities in New York and New Jersey with informers. The Muslim surveillance program, initiated under former NYPD commissioner, Raymond Kelly, is the subject of two federal lawsuits and has faced growing criticism from civil rights groups. NYPD acknowledged that in its 10-year existence, the surveillance program has not generated even a single lead.
Demonstrators protesting NYPD surveillance program // Source: alriyadh.com
The New York Police Department has shut down its “Demographics Unit,” known for secretly infiltrating Muslim communities in New York and New Jersey with informers. The program, initiated under former NYPD commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, is the subject of two federal lawsuits and growing criticism from civil rights groups. The Demographics Unit mapped Muslim communities, recording where members shopped, ate, worked, and worshipped.
The New York Times quotes Linda Sarsour of the Arab American Association of New York to say that the unit created psychological warfare in the Muslim community. “Those documents, they showed where we live. That’s the cafe where I eat. That’s where I pray. That’s where I buy my groceries. They were able to see their entire lives on those maps. And it completely messed with the psyche of the community,” she said.
Sarsour was among several community leaders who met on Wednesday with new NYPD commissioner William Bratton and intelligence chief John Miller. The Demographics Unit, later named the Zone Assessment Unit, has been inactive since Bratton took over in January, and the unit’s detectives were reassigned. Miller told community leaders that the police did not need covert operations to monitor the movements of the Muslim community. According to NYPD chief spokesman Stephen Davis, “understanding certain local demographics can be a useful factor when assessing the threat information that comes into New York City virtually on a daily basis.” Davis notes that the NYPD will rely on public information to create future detailed maps of ethnic communities. “In the future, we will gather that information, if necessary, through direct contact between the police precincts and the representatives of the communities they serve.”
CIA officer Lawrence Sanchez help establish the Demographics Unit in 2003 while still working for the CIA. The goal was to monitor mundane locations where a would-be terrorist could blend into society. After years of gathering information, the NYPD acknowledged it never generated even a single lead. The Demographics Unit was part of a broad intelligence gathering agenda which included the infiltration of mosques and Muslim student groups on college campuses.
In March, a federal judge in New Jersey dismissed a lawsuit over the surveillance program, noting that Muslims could not prove they were harmed by the tactics. Another lawsuit by Attorney Martin Stolar has challenged the NYPD’s tactics, claiming the surveillance programs violated acourt order in a civil rights case involving the NYPD’s surveillance of student groups and protesters in the 1960s and 1970s. Stolar said he wanted to know the plan for the student surveillance program, noting that changing the name of the program does not halt the intentions. “I want them to say that they’re getting rid of not just the unit, but the kind of policing that the unit did,” Stolar said. “Is it still going to be blanket surveillance of where Muslims hang out? Are they going to stop this massive surveillance?”
