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NYPD Pays $1 Million, Vows Surveillance Reforms After Settling with Muslims in New Jersey
The NYPD will pay more than $1 million in legal fees and damages, and pledge to end religious-based surveillance, as part of a settlement with New Jersey Muslims who alleged that police officers crossed the Hudson River in the years after Sept. 11 to monitor their mosques, stores and schools.
The lawsuit followed shocking revelations in the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press series that the NYPD cast a wide net in its surveillance of Muslims -- even traveling outside New York to photograph license plates parked outside mosques and infiltrate Muslim Student Associations at colleges. The settlement mandates that the NYPD now notify New Jersey authorities, like municipal police and county prosecutors, when operating in their jurisdictions. But it can still conduct investigations across the Hudson River.
Also as part of the settlement, the NYPD confirmed that it dismantled the Demographics Unit that surveilled Muslims, and certain records from the Muslim surveillance operations will be expunged.
This is the third surveillance-related lawsuit that the NYPD has settled. Last year, as part of a settlement in New York, the NYPD barred religious-based surveillance under its so-called Handschu Guidelines and appointed a civilian monitor to oversee investigations of political activity. Its new policies regarding surveillance now extend to New Jersey. The NYPD will also allow the New Jersey plaintiffs to recommend changes to the NYPD's training policies as they pertain to religion and the First Amendment.
Also at Reuters, NYT, and Al Jazeera.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @11:53AM (2 children)
Don't we pay the police to watch the population looking for trouble before it starts?
Will these peace loving humans pay this money back if a terrorist is later found in their ranks?
Will they have to pay society should their group ever be found to have sheltered terrorists?
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday April 09 2018, @02:01PM (1 child)
Superficially, yes, but not to the extent of causing trouble in order to stop it, nor of harassment and persecution in the name of possible future random crime discovery. The country where this happened has a legislative document stating, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It doesn't say "The right of the people who are not [Muslim|Brown|Foreigners|Disfavored|Currently-Being-Harassed]," which is a problem for the cops here, who were therefore the criminals committing the harassment and stalking.
In their country, cops can generally enjoy a life of easy, habitual crime where their greatest punishment (for, say, homicide) might be getting put on administrative leave with full pay and benefits, or at worst, being fired from one police organization and having to go to the bother of applying to work for another. It's a serious problem, and the lack of punishment for a single one of the offending cops here who stalked and harassed innocent people in another state is but a minor example.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday April 09 2018, @02:53PM
Aren't we conflating a racial aspect with police work?
Try getting a time machine and a wonderful Alfa coupe' and go around with it in the early 90s Italian roads.
Every Carabinere over 30 stops you, no matter your speed.
Why? because the car had been a fave for criminals for twenty years, and they signal you to stop before they are even aware they have seen you, out of habit.
It becomes a problem only if they make up excuses to fine you, did this happen, out of the metaphor?
Account abandoned.