{"id":9856,"date":"2011-12-04T11:57:56","date_gmt":"2011-12-04T11:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=9856"},"modified":"2011-12-04T11:57:56","modified_gmt":"2011-12-04T11:57:56","slug":"city-council-grills-kelly-on-police-surveillance-of-muslims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2011\/12\/city-council-grills-kelly-on-police-surveillance-of-muslims\/","title":{"rendered":"City Council Grills Kelly on Police Surveillance of Muslims"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

City Council members took aim on Thursday at the New York Police Department\u2019s surveillance of Muslims, pointedly questioning Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly about the breadth of the force\u2019s undercover efforts in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s entities involved in counterterrorism investigations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like we are targeting Muslim neighborhoods and communities,\u201d Councilman Brad Lander said. \u201cThat\u2019s not good for us. We have people out there who are partners who feel the trust is betrayed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

The questioning revolved mostly around a series of recent articles by The Associated Press examining the department\u2019s focus on Muslim communities in the New York metropolitan area and efforts to identify \u201chot spots,\u201d like mosques and other gathering places.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWithout some more independent oversight to figure out what the standards are,\u201d Mr. Lander said, \u201cit\u2019s hard to believe we\u2019re getting the balance between civil liberties and protection right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201cfollow leads wherever those leads may take us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He said surveillance was conducted only in the context of an investigation, but his answers also suggested a low threshold for opening an inquiry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is following leads,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Kelly said leads were pursued only when they involved \u201cthe possibility of unlawful activity.\u201d He said they might be based on \u201cpublicly available information.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

The hearing provided a glimpse into not only a particular surveillance effort, but also the disparate ways the topic has touched New Yorkers\u2019 lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

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, \u201cI\u2019m not speaking on any specific cases.\u201d The imam, Reda Shata, was the subject of a series by The New York Times that won a Pulitzer Prize.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Kelly said that a squad called the Demographics Unit \u2014 now under the Zone Assessment Unit \u2014 mapped not just the city\u2019s Muslim population, but also \u201ca lot of different communities.\u201d That assertion prompted a question from Councilman Daniel Dromm, who asked whether officers had cataloged the city\u2019s Irish, as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Kelly said such information was compiled not based on ethnicity but on \u201cgeography.\u201d On another topic, Mr. Kelly said that while a Central Intelligence Agency employee \u201cworks with us\u201d as an adviser, \u201che doesn\u2019t have access to our investigative files.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Not all of Mr. Kelly\u2019s answers were as definitive. Councilman Robert Jackson, who said he was the Council\u2019s only Muslim member, asked, \u201cHave I been under surveillance by the New York Police Department?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Kelly said he did not think so, but did not leave it at that.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDo you pay all your summonses?\u201d he asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City Council members took aim on Thursday at the New York Police Department\u2019s surveillance of Muslims, pointedly questioning Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly about the breadth..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[149,166,97],"tags":[228,226,357],"class_list":["post-9856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discrimination","category-government","category-us-news","tag-colonialism","tag-imperialist-war","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/growing_9856_c52d8.jpg?fit=400%2C292&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}