With CIA help, NYPD moves covertly in Muslim areas

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:]:]AP:

ADAM GOLDMAN
8/24/11

NEW YORK (AP) — Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Police Department has become one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies, targeting ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government, an Associated Press investigation has found.

These operations have benefited from unprecedented help from the CIA, a partnership that has blurred the line between foreign and domestic spying.

The department has dispatched undercover officers, known as "rakers," into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to officials directly involved in the program. They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing.

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(cue the theme for Jaws)

[Valin]

Commentary: In Defense of the NYPD

Max Boot

8/25/11

 

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You would think the AP had blown the lid on Watergate. In point of fact, while it’s possible the AP story has a few details not reported elsewhere, the basic contours of the NYPD’s efforts–which includes the use of undercover officers, informants, and liaison officers working with intelligence services and police departments both at home and abroad–have long been well-known. They have even been chronicled in books such as Securing the City by Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey.

 

It is unclear what the AP means when it suggests neither the federal government nor the city council “is told exactly what’s going on”: Does that mean the NYPD doesn’t file the names of its confidential informants and undercover officers? Or is it that neither the city council nor the federal government is aware of the broad contours of what’s going on? It’s difficult to see how the latter could be the case given the existence of the Dickey book and numerous other such reports.

 

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No doubt reading this article has raised the blood pressure of the dedicated analysts and detectives working diligently to protect New Yorkers. They can take solace from reading Kipling’s classic poem “Tommy,” which eloquently captures the public’s ambivalent attitude toward its protectors:

 

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