NewsHound
10-07-2011, 01:54 PM
From nytimes.com
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
City Council members took aim on Thursday at the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslims, pointedly questioning Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly about the breadth of the force’s undercover efforts in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
At an unusually intense hearing, several council members tried to pierce the secrecy that has largely surrounded the operations of the Intelligence Division, one of the department’s entities involved in counterterrorism investigations.
“It looks like we are targeting Muslim neighborhoods and communities,” Councilman Brad Lander said. “That’s not good for us. We have people out there who are partners who feel the trust is betrayed.”
The hearing, which lasted over an hour, unfolded before an audience packed with Muslim organizers, civil liberties lawyers and others, including the mother of a Queens man serving a 30-year prison sentence for plotting an attack at the Herald Square subway station in 2004.
The questioning revolved mostly around a series of recent articles by The Associated Press examining the department’s focus on Muslim communities in the New York metropolitan area and efforts to identify “hot spots,” like mosques and other gathering places.
Mr. Lander and other council members raised the possibility of requiring an outside review when the police intend to conduct undercover surveillance as part of counterterrorism investigations.
“Without some more independent oversight to figure out what the standards are,” Mr. Lander said, “it’s hard to believe we’re getting the balance between civil liberties and protection right.”
For his part Mr. Kelly, who began his second stint as police commissioner in January 2002, struck a defiant tone, defending his re-engineering of a municipal police force to address counterterrorism and surveillance. He said his investigators and analysts did not engage in racial profiling, but instead “follow leads wherever those leads may take us.”
He said surveillance was conducted only in the context of an investigation, but his answers also suggested a low threshold for opening an inquiry.
“What we’re doing is following leads,” he said.
Mr. Kelly said leads were pursued only when they involved “the possibility of unlawful activity.” He said they might be based on “publicly available information.”
The mood at the hearing was often adversarial, and it came amid a rough period for Mr. Kelly, whose department is facing a scandal over officers’ fixing traffic tickets in the Bronx and who is hearing accusations of excessive force during the Occupy Wall Street protest, among the largest demonstrations in the city in several years.
In responses to many questions, Mr. Kelly cited a federal court decree that lays out a set of complex guidelines for investigations into political and religious groups. At times, he went on the offensive, suggesting that council members familiarize themselves with the law.
The hearing provided a glimpse into not only a particular surveillance effort, but also the disparate ways the topic has touched New Yorkers’ lives.
Asked about a report by The A.P. that a well-regarded Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, imam had been tracked by the police, Mr. Kelly said, “I’m not speaking on any specific cases.” The imam, Reda Shata, was the subject of a series by The New York Times that won a Pulitzer Prize.
Mr. Kelly said that a squad called the Demographics Unit — now under the Zone Assessment Unit — mapped not just the city’s Muslim population, but also “a lot of different communities.” That assertion prompted a question from Councilman Daniel Dromm, who asked whether officers had cataloged the city’s Irish, as well.
Mr. Kelly said such information was compiled not based on ethnicity but on “geography.” On another topic, Mr. Kelly said that while a Central Intelligence Agency employee “works with us” as an adviser, “he doesn’t have access to our investigative files.”
Not all of Mr. Kelly’s answers were as definitive. Councilman Robert Jackson, who said he was the Council’s only Muslim member, asked, “Have I been under surveillance by the New York Police Department?”
Mr. Kelly said he did not think so, but did not leave it at that.
“Do you pay all your summonses?” he asked.
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
City Council members took aim on Thursday at the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslims, pointedly questioning Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly about the breadth of the force’s undercover efforts in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
At an unusually intense hearing, several council members tried to pierce the secrecy that has largely surrounded the operations of the Intelligence Division, one of the department’s entities involved in counterterrorism investigations.
“It looks like we are targeting Muslim neighborhoods and communities,” Councilman Brad Lander said. “That’s not good for us. We have people out there who are partners who feel the trust is betrayed.”
The hearing, which lasted over an hour, unfolded before an audience packed with Muslim organizers, civil liberties lawyers and others, including the mother of a Queens man serving a 30-year prison sentence for plotting an attack at the Herald Square subway station in 2004.
The questioning revolved mostly around a series of recent articles by The Associated Press examining the department’s focus on Muslim communities in the New York metropolitan area and efforts to identify “hot spots,” like mosques and other gathering places.
Mr. Lander and other council members raised the possibility of requiring an outside review when the police intend to conduct undercover surveillance as part of counterterrorism investigations.
“Without some more independent oversight to figure out what the standards are,” Mr. Lander said, “it’s hard to believe we’re getting the balance between civil liberties and protection right.”
For his part Mr. Kelly, who began his second stint as police commissioner in January 2002, struck a defiant tone, defending his re-engineering of a municipal police force to address counterterrorism and surveillance. He said his investigators and analysts did not engage in racial profiling, but instead “follow leads wherever those leads may take us.”
He said surveillance was conducted only in the context of an investigation, but his answers also suggested a low threshold for opening an inquiry.
“What we’re doing is following leads,” he said.
Mr. Kelly said leads were pursued only when they involved “the possibility of unlawful activity.” He said they might be based on “publicly available information.”
The mood at the hearing was often adversarial, and it came amid a rough period for Mr. Kelly, whose department is facing a scandal over officers’ fixing traffic tickets in the Bronx and who is hearing accusations of excessive force during the Occupy Wall Street protest, among the largest demonstrations in the city in several years.
In responses to many questions, Mr. Kelly cited a federal court decree that lays out a set of complex guidelines for investigations into political and religious groups. At times, he went on the offensive, suggesting that council members familiarize themselves with the law.
The hearing provided a glimpse into not only a particular surveillance effort, but also the disparate ways the topic has touched New Yorkers’ lives.
Asked about a report by The A.P. that a well-regarded Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, imam had been tracked by the police, Mr. Kelly said, “I’m not speaking on any specific cases.” The imam, Reda Shata, was the subject of a series by The New York Times that won a Pulitzer Prize.
Mr. Kelly said that a squad called the Demographics Unit — now under the Zone Assessment Unit — mapped not just the city’s Muslim population, but also “a lot of different communities.” That assertion prompted a question from Councilman Daniel Dromm, who asked whether officers had cataloged the city’s Irish, as well.
Mr. Kelly said such information was compiled not based on ethnicity but on “geography.” On another topic, Mr. Kelly said that while a Central Intelligence Agency employee “works with us” as an adviser, “he doesn’t have access to our investigative files.”
Not all of Mr. Kelly’s answers were as definitive. Councilman Robert Jackson, who said he was the Council’s only Muslim member, asked, “Have I been under surveillance by the New York Police Department?”
Mr. Kelly said he did not think so, but did not leave it at that.
“Do you pay all your summonses?” he asked.