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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: 2) by Virindi on Sunday April 08 2018, @09:16PM (1 child)
Oooh. Directly to the round file, I assume? What a win.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday April 08 2018, @10:25PM
Nah, they are seriously going to end religious-based surveillance.... in favor of EVERYONE-based surveillance!
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @09:58PM (3 children)
nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger
(Score: 5, Funny) by Virindi on Sunday April 08 2018, @10:06PM (2 children)
Mushroom, MUSHROOM!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 09 2018, @04:57AM (1 child)
The regular kind or a 1UP?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @05:59AM
The ancient history kind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badger_badger [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Sunday April 08 2018, @10:43PM (7 children)
The Muslim people within my circle of friends (some of whom are tired of ignorant prejudice such as when rednecks tell them to "go back to mexico") have never shown any signs that I've picked up on that they want to harm anyone or blow anything up or kill anyone, aside from the usual "I'm angry at so and so" mad-on (as opposed to the "I'm mad at (insert country, group, or planet here)".)
My contact with cops, on the other hand, has seen them cause great harm by abusing their authority.
So you can see whose side I am on here.
*However*
Some select people from the following groups claim that they are terrorists (or words to that effect) *because* of their membership in, or the beliefs of, the group:
-(Mostly) white militia members
-Irish Christians (prod, cath, don't seem to matter)
-Muslim extremists
So, maybe it makes sense to look at those, and similar groups, from time to time, and see if maybe there are any nutjobs budding off ready to blow up people, places, or things.
I mean, when I am looking for a lost shoe, I don't start looking in the attic or in the pool--I look on the floor.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday April 09 2018, @12:22AM
They had zero evidence that anybody in any of these mosques was attempting any kind of terrorist anything. They targeted these groups of people because they were Muslim, and "everybody knows" (i.e. stereotype says) that all Muslims are terrorists. Which is explicitly what the First Amendment says is not OK to do, but which they probably thought they'd get away with because Muslims are very much an oppressed minority religion in the US.
If they had investigated a mosque based on reports that people were, say, using it as a place where they could plan something illegal, that would have been fine. But that wasn't what they did.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday April 09 2018, @01:45AM (1 child)
Well for starters how can a group that lacks any authority get in trouble by abusing it. I am all for religious freedom and an avid supporter of immigration, it keeps this country strong and vital. I do have an issue with some communities that come to America and expect the US to conform to their standards rather than the other way around. Keep your religion, celebrate your heritage, but by you coming to American you become (insert origin/religion here) Americans, not the other way around. I agree with your assertion 98% of the Muslims in the world just want to practice their religion and live their lives quietly and in safety. They don't push their religion off on anyone any more than LDS going door to door, or on their mission to country X to 'save' the locals. The other 2% coincide with the extremists of any religion be it Islam, Fundamental Christian or Extreme Buddhism even.
https://www.thenation.com/article/buddhist-violence-burma/ [thenation.com]
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @02:32AM
Instead of overtly demanding that the U.S. conform, the LDS set up genealogy websites and are collecting everyone's DNA so they can do the sickest things to it. I got an email from ancestry.com just the other day. Muslims need to take a look at what LDS/Mormons are doing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Monday April 09 2018, @07:07AM (2 children)
OTOH muslims are mostly good people, like us, which doesn't make islam less of a problem.
Terrorism is not helping islam, the weapon is the womb.
Consider islam has once been a minority in every place they eventually controlled. Or just wait and see what happens in places with a higher percentage of muslims.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday April 09 2018, @01:46PM (1 child)
For perspective, consider that this is true also of, for example, Christians.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday April 09 2018, @02:36PM
I did it, in fact it is implicitly part of my point.
Yes Christians were a minority too.
MAYBE Christians became a majority somewhere (because declaring the faith does not make you Christian, per matthew 7:22).
But guess what, where "Christians" were a majority Muslims could grow. Have you witnessed the inverse trend? Maybe Ex Yugoslavia? So they have not been stopped by other Christians?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday April 09 2018, @08:46AM
The problem is the relative sizes of the sets 'people who self-identify as X and are terrorists' and 'people who self-identify as X'. As a percentage of the general population of the USA, more people who self identify as Muslim are terrorists than people who self identify as white (not mutually exclusive categories), but in absolute numbers it's the other way around and the difference isn't so great. The proportion of the population white males ages 18-40 that are terrorists appears to be higher than the number of muslims that are terrorists (and many of them use their skin colour and gender as part of their justification), so should everyone in that group be observed? In all cases, the ratio is about 1:100,000 terrorists:non-terrorists, so you're only slightly better than a random sample of the population if you focus on any of these groups. Worse, the number of terrorists not in these groups is fairly similar to the number in the groups, so if you're immediately discounting people not in one of the groups from your potential list of suspects then you're going to miss something.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Monday April 09 2018, @03:46AM (3 children)
In a 2013 Poll (Reference: http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-full-report.pdf) [pewforum.org] 81% of US Muslims said violence is never justified to "defend" Islam. This is of course a poll, sometimes people lie.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Monday April 09 2018, @07:52AM (1 child)
Let's assume the same percentage of muslims are peaceful. The problem is that they will do nothing when things like these happen (source, the notoriously right wing site called google, first page results for "pakistan accused burning koran")
20 Aug 2012 ... An 11-year-old Christian girl has been arrested after being accused of blasphemy by burning pages of the Quran
21 Aug 2017 ... A Christian Pakistani teenager narrowly avoided being beaten to death after being accused of burning a Quran, according to reports. The 16-year-old had to be rescued by officers after a mob broke into a police station to try and kill him.
4 Jul 2012 ... A Pakistani mob has taken a man accused of blasphemy from a police station and burnt him to death, police say. The man was being held for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran in public.
Will this lot of peaceful muslims play by satan's rule "the end justifies the means" and shrug it off, or will they fight for the right of unbelievers to unbelieve?
Never mind. Back to the topic. STOP FUCKING WHINING. If the police abuses their power, hang them by the balls, I can't care less. If OTOH the police were investigating mafia and NOT TARGETING Italian immigrants, I would say they are doing a piss poor job. If I go to a foreign country (and people here went over to yugoslavia to buy fuel cigs and meat, I don't care if they take my fingerprints or follow me anywhere. IT IS THEIR FUCKING PLACE THEY SHOULD TAKE CARE OF IT. Just as simple.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @12:04PM
How many Christians have stood by while the great American standing army has been used to commit atrocities or protect business interests? OOps can't run that poll.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @11:45AM
So 19%, or about 1 in 5, are willing to say they think violence is justified?
And what does 'violence to "defend" Islam' mean anyway?
It could be anything from 'forcibly restrain someone attempting to firebomd a mosque' to the historic 'convert to islam or die'.
(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.