State Attorney General Won't Review NYPD's Surveillance Of Muslims

posted on: Feb 26, 2012

The New York State Attorney General’s office says legal and investigative obstacles will not allow a review of the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim communities.

A coalition of about two dozen Arab and Muslim groups asked Eric Schneiderman’s office to conduct a review.

They say new information about the NYPD’s intelligence gathering warrants an investigation, and is asking Schneiderman’s office to reconsider.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is defending the department’s actions in and out of the state, as is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who stresses the terror threat requires persistence.

“It’d be naive to think we should stop following threats when we got to the border, and the courts say you can follow them,” Bloomberg said. “The NYPD is trying to stop terrorism in the entire region. We don’t stop. If we knew of a threat in Newark, we wouldn’t say, that’s yours, you worry about it.”

An internal NYPD document obtained by the Associated Press earlier this month shows that the police department targeted specific mosques and Muslims for surveillance in the years following the 9/11 attacks, contradicting the department’s claim that it does not conduct religious profiling.

NY1