In a landmark settlement, the New York Police Department has agreed on reforms to protect Muslims from its discriminatory and covert surveillance, including the appointment of a civilian to monitor police surveillance. The settlement reintroduces the guidelines and bans police investigations based on race, religion or ethnicity.
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The City admits no wrongdoing in the settlements (which still have to be approved by a judge), but they do restore much of the oversight lost after 9/11. The second suit charged the program violated a 1985 ruling that New Yorkers could not receive police attention due to their legal political and religious activities.
NYPD guidelines will also say that authorities must account for “the potential effect on the political or religious activity of individuals, groups or organizations and the potential effect on persons who, although not a target of the investigations, are affected by or subject to the technique”, according to the settlement. If violations proved systematic, the NYCLU says the civilian monitor would report to the judge who oversaw the settlement. On Thursday, the NYPD reached a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) meant to keep them from ever doing it again.
Farah said the settlement would have no direct impact on the New Jersey suit, which a federal appeals court reinstated in October after a lower court had dismissed it. It’s too early to tell if further reforms might be needed, but the settlement does not redress the losses of New Jersey Muslims, he said. It was “a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys”, de Blasio said in a statement at the time.
Attorneys in that case, which is still open, filed papers in 2013 alleging the city’s surveillance of Muslims violated the rules, which allow the NYPD to visit places open to the public but bar the creation of dossiers not relating to illegal activity.
“Despite the fear and stigma that unwarranted NYPD spying has fostered in Muslim communities, representatives of those communities and their allies organized and took a courageous stand to demand change, through this lawsuit and in many other ways”.
“This additional voice will increase transparency while maintaining the confidentiality of investigations”, the police department said. “I don’t think anyone loses here”.
New York City Police Department Commissioner William Bratton, left, listens as John Miller, the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counter-terrorism, speaks to reporters after a swearing-in ceremony of new recruits, Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016, at Queens College in the Queens borough of New York.
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The police department also agreed to remove from its website a report titled “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat”, which critics said had encouraged religious profiling by over-generalizing and exaggerating domestic Muslim radicalization. Muslim groups had called the findings faulty and inflammatory.
