Excerpt
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): The story has been emerging since last summer. New York City police began extensively monitoring Muslims in the city after 9/11.
The operation, revealed by the Associated Press, triggered immediate criticism from civil rights groups.
CHRISTOPHER DUNN, attorney, New York Civil Liberties Union: At the end of the day, it is, pure and simple, a rogue domestic surveillance operation. And that's a matter of serious concern to us.
RAY SUAREZ: But New York City's police commissioner, Ray Kelly, insisted last year the surveillance is necessary and legal.
RAYMOND KELLY, New York City Police commissioner: We're doing what we believe we have to do to protect the city. We have many, many lawyers in our employ. We see ourselves as very conscious and aware of civil liberties.
And we know that there's always going to be scrutiny. There's always going to be some tension between the police department and the so-called civil liberties groups.
More excerpts
RAY SUAREZ: Matt, you've called the NYPD one of America's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. What was the New York City Police Department doing?
MATT APUZZO, The Associated Press: Well, they have domestic intelligence programs that go far beyond what we would have expected pre-9/11 to see from any police department and in many ways operate in ways that the federal government, the FBI just simply can't.
They have a program called the Demographics Unit, which the NYPD originally denied even existed, plainclothes officers search that -- often Arab officers -- who will go out into Muslim neighborhoods, and they are called rakers. They're going to rake the coals looking for hot spots, meaning they're going to go out and they're going to take pictures of mosques. They're going to take pictures of all the Muslim businesses in the area.
They're going to go into the Muslim cafes or hookah bars and they're just going to eavesdrop and listen to people's conversations, try to gauge the sentiment of the owner, maybe write down his ethnicity, definitely write down his ethnicity. And those goes all into police reports.
So we have seen them for many neighborhoods. We have seen them for Egyptians, Moroccans, Albanians. They are building these profiles of where Muslims live, eat, shop, pray, where they watch sports, where they go to Internet cafes. It's just -- it's an incredible process by which they're bringing in information about the Northeast Muslims.
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MATT APUZZO: And what's interesting about the NYPD is, they have no -- almost no oversight. And the city council is not aware of the programs that are going on. Congress is not aware of what's going on. The attorney general has said that it basically doesn't have the ability to investigate.
The White House said yesterday, yes, we -- our money is being used here, but we're just a policy office. We don't actually have operational control. So, you know, these decisions are largely kept in-house at the NYPD and with Mayor Bloomberg.
This would make Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler proud.
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