NYPD Disbands Controversial Muslim Surveillance Unit

By Associated Press

16 April 14

'Dragnet policing' by demographics unit had damaged police relations with community

special New York police department unit that sparked controversy by tracking the daily lives of Muslims in an effort to detect terror threats has been disbanded, police officials said on Tuesday.

Stephen Davis, a spokesman for the NYPD, confirmed that detectives assigned to the unit had been transferred to other duties within the department's intelligence division.

In a statement the mayor, Bill de Blasio, called the move "a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys".

The NYPD's demographics unit assembled databases on where Muslims lived, shopped, worked and prayed. Plainclothes officers infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques, monitored sermons and catalogued Muslims in New York who adopted Americanised surnames.

After a series of stories by The Associated Press detailing the extent of the NYPD's surveillance of Muslims, two civil rights lawsuits were filed demanding that the department halt the practice.

Since then, a review of the unit – renamed the zone assessment unit in recent years – under the new police commissioner, William Bratton, found the same demographic information could be better collected through direct contact with community groups, officials said.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, hailed the decision, saying police-community relations had suffered from the unit's broad surveillance of Muslims.

"We hope this means an end to the dragnet approach to policing that has been so harmful to police-community relations and a commitment to going after criminal suspicion, rather than innocent New Yorkers," said Lieberman, whose organisation is involved in lawsuits over the practice.

In Washington, 34 members of Congress had demanded a federal investigation into the NYPD's actions. The attorney general, Eric Holder, said he was disturbed by reports about the operations, and the Department of Justice said it was reviewing complaints received from Muslims and their supporters.

The AP's reporting also prompted an investigation by the CIA's inspector general. That internal inquiry concluded that the CIA, which is prohibited from domestic spying, had not broken any laws, but criticised the agency for allowing an officer assigned to the NYPD to operate without sufficient supervision.

The police commissioner at the time, Ray Kelly, had defended the spying tactics, saying officers observed legal guidelines.

The NYPD's decision to disband the unit was first reported in The New York Times.