aclu, nyclu and clear project challenge nypd … · aclu, nyclu and clear project challenge nypd...

ACLU, NYCLU and CLEAR Project Challenge NYPD Muslim Surveillance Program as Unconstitutional On June 18, 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project of Main Street Legal Services, Inc. at CUNY School of Law, filed a lawsuit against the New York City Police Department on behalf of Muslim New Yorkers. The suit charges that the NYPD's Muslim Surveillance Program has imposed an unjustified badge of suspicion and stigma on hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers. It argues that programs hinder the free exercise of religion and violates equal protection under the law. The lawsuit has garnered significant attention from the media, including stories by the Associated Press, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal. The AP article and a full list of coverage follows.

Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility A project of CUNY School of Law

By ADAM GOLDMAN, EILEEN SULLIVAN and TOM HAYS | Associated Press – Tue, Jun 18, 2013

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Police Department's widespread spying programs directed at Muslims have

undermined free worship by innocent people and should be declared unconstitutional, religious leaders and civil rights

advocates said Tuesday after the filing of a federal lawsuit.

"Our mosque should be an open, religious and spiritual sanctuary, but NYPD spying has turned it into a place of suspicion

and censorship," Hamid Hassan Raza, an imam named as a plaintiff, told a rally outside police headquarters shortly after

the suit was filed in federal court in Brooklyn.

The city's legal department responded with a statement calling the intelligence-gathering an appropriate and legal tactic

that helps keep the city safe from terrorism.

The suit asks a judge to order the nation's largest police department to stop their surveillance and destroy any related

records. It's the third significant legal action filed against the NYPD Muslim surveillance program since details of the spy

program were revealed in a series of Associated Press reports starting in 2011.

The lawsuit alleged that Muslim religious leaders in New York have modified their sermons and other behavior so as not to

draw additional police attention. The suit was filed against Mayor Michael Bloomberg, police commissioner Raymond

Kelly and the deputy commissioner of intelligence, David Cohen.

"Through the Muslim surveillance program, the NYPD has imposed an unwarranted badge of suspicion and stigma on

law-abiding Muslim New Yorkers, including plaintiffs in this action," according to the complaint, which was filed on behalf

of religious and community leaders, mosques, and a charitable organization. The plaintiffs are represented by the

American Civil Liberties Union, the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project at CUNY School of

Law and the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Bloomberg and Kelly have defended the department's actions as necessary to identify and thwart terrorist plots, though a

senior NYPD official testified last year that the unit at the heart of the program never generated any leads or triggered a

terrorism investigation.

"The NYPD's strategic approach to combating terrorism is legal, appropriate and designed to keep our city safe," a top city

lawyer, Celeste Koeleveld, said in a statement Tuesday. "The NYPD recognizes the critical importance of 'on-the-ground'

research, as police need to be informed about where a terrorist may go while planning or what they may do after an attack,

as the Boston Marathon bombing proved."

The lawyer apparently was referencing reports that the Boston attackers had contemplated blowing up their remaining

explosives in New York before one of the brother was killed and the other captured.

"Cities cannot play catch-up in gathering intelligence about a terrorist threat," Koeleveld added. "Our results speak for

themselves, with New York being the safest big city in America and the police having helped thwart several terrorist plots

in recent years."

The lawsuit, which accuses the city of violating the First and Fourteenth amendments, is the latest legal challenge to the

activities of the NYPD Intelligence Division. A year ago, the California-based civil rights organization Muslim Advocates

sued the NYPD over its counterterrorism programs. This year, civil rights lawyers urged a judge to stop the NYPD from

routinely observing Muslims in restaurants, bookstores and mosques, saying the practice violates a landmark 1985 court

settlement that restricted the kind of surveillance used against war protesters in the 1960s and '70s.

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The lawsuit describes a pattern of NYPD spying directed at Muslims in New York since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Raza said he began taping his sermons at a Brooklyn mosque because of concerns that the NYPD was monitoring what he

said and would take his words out of context. In addition, Raza and other religious leaders became highly suspicious of new

members eager to join their communities because of the department's rampant use of secret informants, the complaint

said.

Since news spread that an informant had infiltrated Raza's mosque, "attendance has declined, and everyone in the

congregation has become afraid to talk to the newcomers," Raza told dozens of supporters of the lawsuit at Tuesday's rally.

"A once-vibrant community has become even more scared and suspicious. I cannot believe this has happened in a country

that I know and love."

The lawsuit also details how the NYPD used an informant to spy on 20-year-old Asad Dandia, a college student who ran a

charitable organization called Muslims Giving Back. Dandia's group gave food to the needy. An NYPD informant, Shamiur

Rahman, acknowledged last year in an interview with the AP that he had spied on Dandia on others.

The informant had approached Dandia, claiming he "had a very dark past and he wanted to be a better practicing Muslim,"

Dandia said at the rally. He invited the informant to volunteer and they "bonded," he added.

Once the he learned of Rahman's true identify, he said, "I felt betrayed and hurt because someone I had taken as a friend

and brother was lying to me and used me."

Dandia told the crowd that the charity's ability to raise money and help the community has declined because it's been

targeted by NYPD counterterrorism programs.

The plaintiffs asked a judge to appoint a monitor to ensure the police department follows the law. This is second time this

month that the prospect of a court-appointed monitor has been raised for the NYPD. The department's stop-and-frisk

tactic that overwhelming targets minorities has come under fire, with a trial recently ending in federal court that could

decide whether the policing practice is unconstitutional. If the judge rules against the NYPD in the stop-and-frisk case, the

Justice Department said it would support appointing a federal monitor. Kelly and Bloomberg defend that program as well

and have said federal oversight would put the city in danger.

Asked about the recent uproar once-secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, Kelly told reporters that he

believes most Americans are accepting of the fact that the government collects data on phone calls and Internet usage but

deserved to know it was happening.

"I don't think it ever should have been made secret," he said.

___

Contact the Washington investigative team at [email protected]. Follow Goldman and Sullivan at

http://twitter.com/adamgoldmandap and http://twitter.com/esullivanap

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Printing sponsored by:

Supporters of a lawsuit challenging the NYPD's Muslim surveillance programme gather in front of the city's police

headquarters. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

Asad "Ace" Dandia, a 20-year-old college student and Brooklyn native, thought nothing

of the Facebook friend request he approved in March 2012.

The 19-year-old at the other end of the exchange, Shamiur Rahman, told Dandia that he

was struggling with a dark past and hoped to become a better Muslim. Rahman asked

Dandia about "any events or anything" coming up. Dandia believed he was acting in

accordance with his Muslim faith by inviting the young man to meet his friends in

Fesabeelillah Services of NYC, an Islamic charity organization.

"I gladly took him. We bonded. We shared stories," Dandia said. "He would come to me

Ryan Devereaux in New Yorkguardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 June 2013 16.00 EDT

Civil liberties groups file lawsuit over NYPD surveillance of Muslims | ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/18/nypd-surveillance-muslims...

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and he would tell me how I changed his life and I helped him become a better person."

Seven months later, after inviting Rahman into his home for dinner with his family on

numerous occasions and once hosting him overnight, Dandia learned the truth about

Rahman. In a startling status update posted on Facebook, Rahman revealed he was an

undercover informant, working for the New York City police department.

"I was terrified and I was afraid for my family, especially for my younger sister," Dandia

said. "I felt betrayed and hurt because someone who I took as a friend and a brother was

lying to me."

Dandia's ordeal is detailed in a new lawsuit that was filed in federal court on Tuesday,

challenging the NYPD's surveillance of Muslim communities. Joined by the other

plaintiffs in the suit – including two Muslim houses of worship, a Muslim charity, an

imam and a Muslim father of two – Dandia delivered his story to the media and a crowd

of supporters outside NYPD headquarters.

"How would you react if you found out that someone who spent a night in your house

was an informant for the police department?" Dandia asked the crowd. "I was shocked

that the police who were supposed to protect and serve me were spying on me, although

I did nothing wrong."

Filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the

Creating Law Enforcement Accountability (CLEAR) project of Main Street Legal

Services at CUNY Law School, the suit accuses the NYPD of religious profiling and

suspicion-less surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers. The suit calls for the destruction of

all records on individuals created as a result of the department's surveillance and the

appointment of an independent monitor to oversee the NYPD's intelligence gathering

practices.


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New York police

commissioner Raymond Kelly. Photograph: Louis Lanzano/AP

The legal action comes as the nation continues to wrestle with a growing debate over

security and privacy, ignited by leaks to the Guardian detailing the National Security

Agency's expansive surveillance efforts.

"This suit seeks to enforce two of the constitution's most fundamental guarantees:

freedom from discrimination and freedom of religion," said Hina Shamsi, director of

the ACLU's National Security Project. "The NYPD has betrayed the expectations and

violated the rights of New York's Muslims and it has betrayed, also, the expectations of

all New Yorkers."

The NYPD's surveillance of Muslim communities was first revealed in detail in August

2011, in a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series by the Associated Press. The AP

investigation detailed how, in the wake of September 11, NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly

endeavored to transform elements of the nation's most powerful police force into a

miniature CIA.

According to documents obtained by the AP, the NYPD's intelligence division developed

a secret unit tasked with mapping the social, religious and business landscape of the

greater New York area. The emphasis on Muslim communities was virtually exclusive

and, according to one former police official, modeled in part on how Israeli authorities

operate in the West Bank.

In an effort to uncover terrorist plots, so-called "rakers" or "mosque crawlers" –

typically paid NYPD informants – were sent to Muslim student association meetings,

businesses, universities, restaurants, whitewater rafting trips and more than 250

mosques in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. The

surveillance program was funded, in part, by a little-known White House grant for law

enforcement organizations to access in the so-called war on drugs.


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The CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans, was instrumental in developing

the NYPD's surveillance program, at times continuing to pay personnel hired by the

police department to mentor incoming officers. David Cohen, a veteran CIA officer with

no police experience, was the architect of the NYPD's spy program. While serving as

president Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, now director of the

CIA, said he had "full confidence that the NYPD is doing things consistent with the law".

In defending its intelligence-gathering techniques, NYPD officials claim to have

prevented 14 terrorist attacks since 11 September 2001 (though the NYPD's centrality

and/or credibility in virtually every alleged plot has been called into question).

According to the August 2012 sworn testimony of Lieutenant Paul Galati, chief of the

NYPD intelligence division, the department's multi-state counterterrorism dragnet had

so far failed to yield a single criminal lead. In an extended interview with the Wall

Street Journal in April, Commissioner Kelly was asked if changes had been made to the

NYPD's surveillance programs in the wake of the AP series. "No," he said.

Hina Shamsi, director

of the ACLU's National Security Project, addresses the media outside NYPD

headquarters. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

On Tuesday, Hina Shamsi of the ACLU said: "Since 2002, the NYPD has carried out a

policy and practice based on the false and unconstitutional premise that Muslim

religious belief and practices are a basis for law-enforcement scrutiny. That is a premise

rooted in bias and ignorance, not good law enforcement or fact."

Plaintiffs in the suit argue the NYPD's counterterrorism efforts have had a "profoundly"

damaging impact on their religious goals, missions and practices.

In an email response to the Guardian, city attorney Celeste Koeleveld said: "The NYPD's


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strategic approach to combating terrorism is legal, appropriate and designed to keep

our City safe. The NYPD recognizes the critical importance of 'on-the-ground' research,

as police need to be informed about where a terrorist may go while planning or what

they may do after an attack, as the Boston marathon bombing proved. Cities cannot play

catch-up in gathering intelligence about a terrorist threat. Our results speak for

themselves, with New York being the safest big city in America and the police having

helped thwart several terrorist plots in recent years."

A Brooklyn imam, Hamid Hassan Raza, another plaintiff in the suit, said fear of

surveillance had caused him to take specific precautions when conducting sermons,

which in turn have hampered his ability to serve as a fully-functioning religious leader

in his community.

"I have for years, taped the sermons I give because I am afraid an NYPD officer or an

informant will misquote me or take a portion of a sermon out of context," Raza said. "I

stopped mentioning in my sermons, or even as I counsel worshippers, current affairs or

religious subjects that I fear the NYPD might object to."

Raza said that after the Boston bombings, for example, he neglected to discuss the

attacks, out of fear of repercussions. Police documents uncovered by the AP indicate

that Raza's house of worship, Masjid Al-Ansar, has been the subject of NYPD

surveillance since at least 2008.

"I never know what the NYPD might question and I don't want to subject myself or my

community to further police scrutiny or worse," Raza said. "Because of NYPD spying,

I'm not able to fulfill my duty as an Imam. I'm constantly falling short of my obligations

to my congregation."

Raza said that confirmation of an NYPD informant's presence in his house of worship

caused attendance to drop and sowed seeds of suspicion towards newcomers. "Our once

vibrant community has become even more scared and suspicious," Raza said. "I cannot

believe that this has happened in the country that I know and love."

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latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-nypd-muslims-20130618,0,7690844.story

By Matt Pearce

6:00 AM PDT, June 19, 2013

New York Muslims have filed a federal lawsuit against theNew York Police Department over the department'ssurveillance of Muslims, which they called invasive andunconstitutional.

The public debate over government surveillance hascrescendoed over the last two weeks after a leakerrevealed that the federal government had secretly collecteddetailed phone records, on a massive scale, for years.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday emerged from a narrower butsimilar channel of criticism over the growth of surveillanceon citizens since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The suit alsoillustrated the power of the press to bring secret programsnot just to light, but also to court.

Over a series of stories in 2011 and 2012, Associated Press reporters exposed a secret, long-running NYPDprogram to monitor Muslims across the Northeast using informants and databases in the hopes of spottingradicals.

Once made aware of the program, Muslim groups and civil liberties advocates were outraged, though aPulitzer for the AP's stories notwithstanding, city and police officials persisted in defending the spying asnecessary to combat terrorism.

As recently as Monday, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly went so far as to criticize the National SecurityAgency for not owning up to its monitoring programs, telling reporters, "I think the American public canaccept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone, it’s going to be recorded and it goes tothe government."

The claims in the new lawsuit allege that New York Muslims have instead experienced an observer effect:Muslim leaders and community members said that they were afraid to discuss certain issues and listen tocertain sermons for fear that their comments would be taken out of context by informants.

One Brooklyn imam, Hamid Hassan Raza, said in the lawsuit that he spent more than $2,000 upgrading videoequipment and records every sermon to use as insurance against any investigation into his comments.

Asad Dandia, leader of an Islamic charitable group, said that rumors of an informant in the group ravaged hisfundraising efforts; he also accused the suspected informant of trying to make trouble in the group by talkingabout controversial or sensitive subjects, such as the war in Syria.

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A Brooklyn mosque alleged that the NYPD set up a surveillance camera pointed at the front door of thebuilding, which worried some congregants and caused others to stay away.

"The NYPD has also instructed and trained informants to bait Muslim New Yorkers into making inflammatoryremarks, which are then reported to the police," the lawsuit claims. "One such technique is known as 'createand capture,' by which an informant 'creates' a conversation with a Muslim New Yorker about jihad orterrorism and then 'captures' and reports that individual’s response to the NYPD."

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, a lawyer for the city's Department of Public Safety defended theNYPD's work.

"The NYPD's strategic approach to combating terrorism is legal, appropriate and designed to keep our Citysafe," said the statement by Celeste Koeleveld, a city attorney. "The NYPD recognizes the critical importanceof 'on-the-ground' research, as police need to be informed about where a terrorist may go while planning orwhat they may do after an attack, as the Boston Marathon bombings proved.

"Cities cannot play catch-up in gathering intelligence about a terrorist threat," Koeleveld continued. "Ourresults speak for themselves, with New York being the safest big city in America and the police having helpedthwart several terrorist plots in recent years."

(The AP reported that during a 2012 deposition for a civil rights case, NYPD Assistant Chief Thomas Galatisaid six years of monitoring by the department's secret "Demographics Unit" had not resulted in any terrorismleads or investigations.)

The suit -- which is backed by the American and New York Civil Liberties Unions -- says that Muslimsbecame more anxious about police surveillance after the AP exposed the length of the NYPD's efforts, andattorneys argue that the spying discriminated against Muslims and also violated the 1st Amendment freedomto worship.

The filing mimics the path of other actions recently filed against the federal government, in which news reports -- and ensuing official disclosures -- gave greater legal traction for attorneys to sue governmentprograms that had operated in secrecy.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit last week alleging that the NSA's blanket phone surveillance on Americans wasunconstitutional.

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Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

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Hina Shamsi, an attorney with the ACLU, announces a federal civil rights suit filed today on behalf of Muslims targeted by the

NYPD’s spying program. Photo: Seth Freed Wessler

by Seth Freed Wessler, Tuesday, June 18 2013, 3:35 PM EST

Tweet 45 Comments

Asad Dandia found out last year that a man he considered a friend was actually an NYPD informant hired to spy on

Dandia because he’s Muslim. Today, Dandia joined with other Muslim New Yorkers and civil liberties groups at One

Police Plaza in Manhattan to announce a lawsuit against New York City and the NYPD. They allege that the NYPD

engaged in unconstitutional practices that singled out Muslims for profiling and surveillance. The plaintiffs say that

the program has lasting and damaging effects on the day-to-day lives of Muslims in New York who fear they’re spied

on for no reason but their faith.

Dandia, who is 20 and a social work student at Kingsborough Community College, explained at the press conference

that he was the co-founder of a charitable group called Muslims Giving Back, and that in March of last year, a man

named Shamiur Rahman [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/shamiur-rahman-nypd-paid-muslims-

bait-jihad-terrorism_n_2005141.html] approached him to say that he’d like to help. Dandia became close to

Rahman, inviting him at times to eat meals with his parents and sister at their home in Brooklyn. Then, in October,

Rahman went public about his work as an informant. In an Associated Press story, Rahman said he now believes his

work for the NYPD was “detrimental to the Constitution.” The AP, which revealed the surveillance program in

2011, reported [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/shamiur-rahman-nypd-paid-muslims-bait-jihad-

terrorism_n_2005141.html] last year that:

Informants like Rahman are a central component of the NYPD’s wide-ranging programs to monitor life in

Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim

businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who

trawl the mosques - known informally as “mosque crawlers” - tell police what the imam says at sermons and

provide police lists of attendees, even when there’s no evidence they committed a crime.

Today, Dandia struggled to hold back tears as he described the impact of that revelation. “I was afraid for my parents

because this guy slept over at my home,” he said, adding that since the informant made his identify public, Muslims

Giving Back has struggled to raise money, and the group was asked not to hold meetings or fundraise at a Brooklyn

mosque where it had been based.

The suit, filed by the ACLU, New York Civil Liberties Union, and the CLEAR Project, a City University of New

York-based legal advocacy group, alleges that the NYPD’s vast program to spy on Muslims in New York and

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surrounding areas violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause by targeting communities solely on the

basis of religion. The groups also claim the program violates the plaintiffs’ freedom of religion. They’re asking the

court to enjoin the practices outright and impose an independent, court appointed monitor to enforce the injunction.

Other plaintiffs in the case include New York imams and mosques.

The NYPD and City of New York have claimed that the spying program, once called the Demographic Unit, only

followed legitimate leads. But a high-ranking NYPD official said in court proceedings in a separate lawsuit that the

unit has uncovered no actual plots of violence. Instead, the plaintiffs say, it has struck fear into Muslim communities.

TAGS: Muslims [http://colorlines.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/colorlne/managed-mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=2&

tag=Muslims&limit=20] NYPD Spying [http://colorlines.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/colorlne/managed-mt/mt-

search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=2&tag=NYPD%20Spying&limit=20] Racial Profiling [http://colorlines.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap

/colorlne/managed-mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=2&tag=Racial%20Profiling&limit=20] Surveillance

[http://colorlines.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/colorlne/managed-mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=2&tag=Surveillance&

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Lawsuit asks federal judge to end NYPD’ssurveillance of Muslims Civil rights advocates, religious leaders say the surveillance is unlawful; they ask that the programsbe halted and that the court install a monitor

BY THOMAS TRACY / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2013, 4:01 PM

SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES

Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly are named as defendants in a lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court inBrooklyn, that calls for an end to the police department's surveillance of the Muslim community.

Civil rights advocates have asked a federal judge to declare an end to the NYPD’s various Muslimsurveillance programs, arguing the spying unconstitutionally targets innocent people based solely on theirreligion.

The New York Civil Liberties Union filed suit in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday, naming Mayor Bloomberg andPolice Commissioner Raymond Kelly as defendants along with Kelly’s deputy commissioner for intelligence,David Cohen.

The suit says the surveillance, including the department’s practice of infiltrating mosques with informants,undermines free worship. It requests that the judge force the NYPD to destroy records produced through thesurveillance and calls for the creation of a monitor to ensure the department ends its “religious profilingpractices.”

“When a police department turns law-abiding people into suspects because they go to a mosque and not achurch or a synagogue, it violates our Constitution’s guarantees of equality and religious freedom,” said HinaShamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “No one questions that theNYPD has a job to do, but spying on innocent New Yorkers because of their religion is a wrong andineffective way to do it.”

RELATED: MUSLIM SPYING HAS REAL VICTIMS

The police department contends the surveillance is lawful and is designed to protect the city from terroristattack.

“Critics who suggest that it is unlawful for the police department to search online, visit public places, or mapneighborhoods either haven’t read the [programs’] guidelines or are intentionally obfuscating their meaning,”said the NYPD’s top spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne.

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“Those criticisms, whether ill-informed or calculated, will not deter the NYPD from fully respecting theConstitution and protecting the public from those intent on killing more New Yorkers.”

Plaintiffs in the suit are represented by the NYCLU, the ACLU and the Creating Law EnforcementAccountability & Responsibility project at CUNY School of Law.

RELATED: RULING BACKS NYPD'S REFUSAL TO DISCLOSE INFO ON MUSLIM SURVEILLANCE

Plaintiff Asad Dandia of the Brooklyn-based group Muslims Giving Back said the NYPD sent an informant tospy on his organization.

“I met him through a mutual friend,” said Dandia, 20. “He told me he had a dark past and wanted to changehis life, so I told him to join our organization.”

Dandia became fast friends with the would-be spy, who often visited his family and slept over his house —until he confessed on Facebook that he was an NYPD informant.

“He said it was either (informing) or facing criminal charges,” Dandia said of the choice the NYPD allegedlygave the informant. “He was, in a way, coerced by the NYPD. He did feel that (the NYPD) used him to dotheir bidding.”

RELATED: LIU: SURVEILLANCE OF MUSLIM'S UNCONSTITUTIONAL

The NYPD’s Muslim spying programs were revealed in a series of Associated Press stories beginning in2011 that highlighted how cops paid informants to bait Muslims into making inflammatory statements, takepictures inside mosques and record names of worshippers attending services.

This is the third suit to be brought against the NYPD regarding its surveillance of the Muslim community.

A New York City Law Department spokeswoman said there’s nothing illegal about the NYPD’s “strategicapproach to combatting terrorism.”

“The NYPD recognizes the critical importance of ‘on the ground’ research as police need to be informedabout where a terrorist may go while planning or what they may do after an attack, as the Boston Marathonbombing proved,” said city attorney Celeste Koeleveld. “Cities cannot play catch-up in gathering intelligenceabout a terrorist threat.”

Koeleveld’s statement references how the two brothers held responsible for the Boston Marathon bombingsearlier this year had planned to travel to New York to set up the last explosives in their arsenal.

With News Wire Services

[email protected]

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NY CRIME June 18, 2013, 6:02 p.m. ET

By TAMER EL-GHOBASHY

A group of Muslim organizations and individuals filed a civil lawsuit on Tuesday asking a federaljudge to declare unconstitutional the New York Police Department's practice of singling outMuslims for surveillance.

The lawsuit charges that the NYPD equates the practice of Islam with suspicious activity—astandard it doesn't use with other religions—and seeks to have the monitoring stopped, anyinformation gathered during years of surveillance expunged and an independent overseerappointed to make sure the department complies.

"When a police department turns law-abiding people into suspects because they go to a mosqueand not a church or a synagogue, it violates our Constitution's guarantees of equality and religiousfreedom," said Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of three groupsrepresenting six plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.

Of the plaintiffs, three are individuals, two are mosques and one is a charitable organization, all ofwhom alleged direct surveillance by undercover NYPD officers and informants in the years sincethe Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The plaintiffs, none of whom have been accused of anywrongdoing, said the monitoring has had an adverse effect on their ability to practice theirreligion and serve their communities.

Paul Browne, the chief spokesman for the NYPD, said the department follows strict federal rules,called Handschu Guidelines, that protect political activity from police interference. They allow theNYPD to visit any event or place that is open to the public, to search online, and to map certainneighborhoods.

He said critics of the Muslim surveillance program "haven't read the guidelines or areintentionally obfuscating their meaning."

"Those criticisms, whether ill-informed or calculated, will not deter the NYPD from fullyrespecting the Constitution and protecting the public from those intent on killing more NewYorkers," he added.

Attorneys for the city on Tuesday echoed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's continued assertions thatthe program is legal and of "critical importance" in keeping the city safe from terrorist attacks.

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Organizations and Individuals Seek Court Ruling on Monitoring

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Since revelations of the surveillance were made public in 2011 through a series of leakeddocuments to the Associated Press, civil-liberties groups and some political leaders have beencritical of the NYPD compiling information on mosques, cafes, community centers and studentgroups at universities—inside New York City and outside its boundaries.

Of particular concern was the dispatching of informants to where Muslims gather to "infiltratemosques and monitor the conversations of congregants and religious leaders without anysuspicion of wrongdoing," the lawsuit states.

On Tuesday, the plaintiffs and their attorneys held a news conference outside NYPD headquartersin Lower Manhattan and spoke of the monitoring severely disrupting their everyday lives.

Hamid Hassan Raza, the imam of the Masjid Al-Ansar, a mosque in Brooklyn, said thesurveillance has prompted him to be suspicious of newcomers to the mosque, fearing they mightbe informants. For a time, he made sure his religious sermons were recorded in full so they couldnot be taken out of context. He has curbed political and current-events discussions, such asconversations about the recent bombings at the Boston Marathon, because "I don't want to subjectmyself or my congregants to any police scrutiny or worse than that."

"We are not able to speak about these openly because we are afraid," he said.

Asad Dandia, a 20-year-old college sophomore from Brooklyn who co-founded Muslims GivingBack, a charity that feeds the needy, said his group was infiltrated by an informant who lateridentified himself to the AP and shared extensive details of his work. Mr. Dandia said theassociation with the alleged informant has left him ostracized and unable to engage in communityand religious work.

"We have been rejected from our own local mosque, our donations have declined and to this daythere are people—friends, childhood friends—who do not want to be seen in public with me," hesaid.

Ramzi Kassem, an attorney representing Mr. Dandia in the lawsuit, said the surveillance has leftMuslim communities at large reluctant to report "everyday crime," fearing "routine everydayreactions with police will be used for intelligence-gathering purposes."

The plaintiffs and their attorneys were joined at the news conference by Muslim leaders, some ofwhom recently boycotted an interfaith breakfast with Mr. Bloomberg in protest of the surveillancepolicy, and leaders of other faiths who said they objected to the singling out of any group based ontheir religious beliefs.

Linda Sarsour, a Brooklyn-based community organizer, said she had worked with the NYPD toimprove relations with Muslims. She said she worried that a younger generation of MuslimAmericans would become insecure in their American identity and suspicious of law enforcementas a result of the monitoring.

"What does that tell them about who they are as Americans when the very police departmentthat's supposed to protect them and embrace them as New Yorkers treats them as suspects?" Ms.Sarsour said.

Write to Tamer El-Ghobashy at [email protected]

A version of this article appeared June 19, 2013, on page A19 in the U.S. edition of The Wall

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June 23, 2013

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

The revelation in 2011 that the New York City Police Department was spying on law-abiding

Muslims rightly attracted scrutiny from the Justice Department, which announced last year that it

intended to review the program. The disclosure also raised troubling questions about whether the

city was violating a federal court order that bars it from retaining information gleaned from

investigations of political activity unless there are reasonable indications of potential wrongdoing.

The purpose of that order was to discourage unjustified surveillance and prevent police from

peering into people’s private affairs and building dossiers on them without legitimate cause.

Now comes a new federal lawsuit filed on behalf of Muslim citizens and organizations saying they

have been subjected to illegal surveillance that has disrupted Muslim houses of worship, made it

difficult for congregants and their spiritual leaders to worship freely, and inhibited Muslims from

openly associating with lawful Muslim charities and civic groups and exercising First Amendment

rights.

One striking case in the complaint involves Masjid At-Taqwa, a mosque in Brooklyn, where the

Police Department is alleged to have installed a surveillance camera, clearly marked with the

department’s insignia and pointed at the mosque door. This seems curious because the mosque’s

longtime leader, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, was said in the complaint to be a clergy liaison for the

N.Y.P.D. Community Affairs Bureau and a member of the Majlis Ash-Shura, also known as the

Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York.

The camera, which the complaint says was moved across the street but remains in use, raised fears

among congregants that they were being targeted for deportation. Many refrained from attending

communal prayer; some left the congregation. Concerned that their religious pronouncements

might be misquoted by informants, the mosque’s spiritual leaders began recording sermons so that

they would be able to defend themselves. They have said they avoided meeting with congregants

individually because they feared the congregants might be informants.

Meanwhile, according to the complaint, a police informant who visited this and other mosques

tried to lure congregants into inflammatory conversations that would then have been reported to

the police. According to court documents, the informant tried the same strategy with a Muslim

charity that distributed food to the needy. The group, which apparently did nothing illegal, lost

credibility in the community once people learned that it had been a target of police scrutiny.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has responded to such complaints by insisting that the

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department’s surveillance program is perfectly legal and implying that critics are undermining

public safety. This is the same response he offers when challenged on the stop-and-frisk program.

This arrogant approach tries to discredit legitimate criticism while justifying further overreach by a

department with a history of abusive behavior. It is up to the courts to determine whether the

Muslim surveillance program and the stop-and-frisk program are constitutional. What already

seems clear is that these surveillance policies create suspicion and mistrust, which does not help

the Police Department or anyone else.

Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »

More Overreach by the N.Y.P.D. - NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/opinion/more-overreach-by-the-nypd...

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