NYPD Monitored Muslim College Students' Activities

Muslim Student Association (MSA) 

Investigators have been infiltrating Muslim student groups at Brooklyn College and other schools in the city, monitoring their Internet activity and placing undercover agents in their ranks, police documents obtained by The Associated Press show. Legal experts say the operation may have broken a 19-year-old pact with the colleges and violated U.S. privacy laws, jeopardizing millions of dollars in federal research money and student aid.

The infiltration was part of a secret NYPD intelligence-gathering effort that put entire Muslim communities under scrutiny. Police photographed restaurants and grocery stores that cater to Muslims and built databases showing where people shopped, got their hair cut and prayed. The AP reported on the secret campaign in a series of stories beginning in August.

The majority of Islamic terrorism cases involve young men, and infiltrating student groups gave police access to that demographic. Alarmed professors and students, however, say it smacks of the FBI spying conducted on college campuses in the 1960s. They are calling on college administrators to investigate.

"It's really about personal freedom," said Moustafa Bayoumi, an English professor at Brooklyn College. "The government, through the police department, is working privately to destroy the private lives of Muslim citizens."

....

In their surveillance, undercover officers from the department's Special Services Unit attended events organized by Muslim students, the official said, as did members of the NYPD's Demographics Unit, a secret squad that used plainclothes officers of Arab descent to monitor neighborhoods and events.

The NYPD's Cyber Intelligence Unit used speakers of Arabic, Persian and other languages to monitor the websites of Muslim student organizations. They trolled chat rooms and talked to students online, the official said.

By 2006, police had identified 31 Muslim student associations and labeled seven of them "MSAs of concern," the documents show.

Six were at branches of the City University of New York: Brooklyn College, Baruch College, City College, Hunter College, La Guardia Community College and Queens College. The other was at St. John's University, a Catholic college in the borough of Queens.

-npr

Trust but Verify: NYPD spied on anti-terror Muslim leader as he dined with Bloomberg

In this photo taken Monday, Oct. 3, 2011, Sheikh Reda Shata stands in the men's prayer room at his mosque, The Islamic Center of Monmouth County, in Middletown, N.J.

The New York Police Department's intelligence squad secretly assigned an undercover officer to monitor a prominent Muslim leader even as he decried terrorism, cooperated with the police, dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series by The New York Times about Muslims in America.

Sheikh Reda Shata was among those singled out for surveillance because of his "threat potential" and what the NYPD considered links to organizations associated with terrorism, despite having never been charged with any crime, according to secret police documents obtained by The Associated Press.

...

During his time at the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge since 2002, he welcomed FBI agents to his mosque to speak to Muslims, invited NYPD officers for breakfast and threw parties for officers who were leaving the precinct.

As police secretly watched Shata in 2006, he had breakfast and dinner with Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion and was invited to meet with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Shata recalls.

msnbc

This video (h/t iowntheworld) says it all:

NYPD Has Air-to-Air Capability

The Internet was aflame this morning with talk of NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly’s statement to 60 Minutes last night that his department has the ability to shoot down aircraft. Naturally, this prompted people to ask if the department has some type of surface-to-air-missiles. We’ve seen talk about the militarization of America’s police departments over the past few decades but this would take things to a new level!
Here’s what Kelly told 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley:+

Seriously? CIA investigates whether laws broken helping NYPD

The CIA inspector general is investigating whether the agency broke the law by helping the New York Police Department build intelligence-gathering programs that monitored life in Muslim communities, the agency said Tuesday following an investigation by The Associated Press. Separately, the U.S. government's top intelligence official conceded that it looked bad for the CIA to be working with city police departments.


"It's my own personal view that that's not a good optic, to have CIA involved in any city-level police department," said James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence. "But I think CIA is going to address that."


The agency's unprecedented cooperation with the NYPD was a subject of an eight-month investigative reporting project by The Associated Press. The AP found that NYPD intelligence officers analyzed hundreds of mosques and student organizations, infiltrating dozens of them. Undercover officers eavesdropped in cafes and restaurants and wrote daily reports about what they overheard. The department also maintained a list of 28 countries that, along with "American Black Muslim," the department labeled "ancestries of interest."


A CIA officer, Lawrence Sanchez, helped create and guide these programs. From 2002 to 2004, when these programs were being built, Sanchez was on the CIA payroll and maintained an office at both the NYPD and the CIA's offices in New York. The programs have continued with at least the tacit support of President Barack Obama, whose administration has repeatedly sidestepped questions about them.


The NYPD also sent a detective on a temporary assignment to the CIA, where he completed the agency's 17-week foreign espionage course. After that rare training, he then returned to New York to supervise intelligence investigations.


Breitbart

NYPD Cops Dirty Dancing at West Indian Day Parade

This can't be good for NYPD's image

NYPD and FBI News Conference on NYC Terror Alert

NY Cops May Have Killed Bystander With One of 71 Stray Bullets

In another example of apalling marksmanship by members of law enforcement, it appears that a bystander who was killed during one of the 52 shooting events that occurred in New York City over the weekend was probably killed by a stray round fired by an NYPD officer. This, in and of itself, isn't terribly surprising given the population density of the five burrows. What is notable is that, as nytimes.com reports, eight officers firing 73 bullets at one shooter managed to hit him only twice…

The shooting on Monday erupted just after 9 p.m., when, the police said, Leroy Webster, 32, opened fire on Mr. Johnson, 29, in a dispute that escalated after an earlier confrontation the men had on Park Place, blocks away from the path of the West Indian Day Parade.

As Mr. Webster fired several shots, the police said, Mr. Johnson was struck in the neck and fell mortally wounded.

Several officers confronted Mr. Webster, who officials said ignored their orders and fired at them. Eight officers returned fire —in two distinct volleys —firing 73 bullets and striking Mr. Webster twice, in his chest and hip.

Read it here:
http://thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/09/daniel-zimmerman/ny-cops-may-have-killed-bystander-with-one-of-71-stray-bullets/

h/t Don Vito