NYPD Muslim Informant: I was Ordered to Bait Muslims

The Associated Press this week reported that a 19 year old Bengali-born informant in the New York Police Department (NYPD).

Here is how the AP began the story, in "Shamiur Rahman: NYPD Paid Me To 'Bait' Muslims Into Saying Things About Jihad, Terrorism". This is a more than a little bit creepy. As a Muslim site queried, "Is this halal?" (This conception is similar to Jewish tradition. One might ask, "Is this proper, Halachically Speaking?" Or to people less in the loop, is this kosher?)

A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

"We need you to pretend to be one of them," Rahman recalled the police telling him. "It's street theater."

Rahman said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was "detrimental to the Constitution." After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police – and after he told the police that he had been contacted by the AP – he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, "Steve," and his handler's NYPD phone number was disconnected.

Rahman's account shows how the NYPD unleashed informants on Muslim neighborhoods, often without specific targets or criminal leads. Much of what Rahman said represents a tactic the NYPD has denied using.

The AP corroborated Rahman's account through arrest records and weeks of text messages between Rahman and his police handler. The AP also reviewed the photos Rahman sent to police. Friends confirmed Rahman was at certain events when he said he was there, and former NYPD officials, while not personally familiar with Rahman, said the tactics he described were used by informants.

Informants like Rahman are a central component of the NYPD's wide-ranging programs to monitor life in Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques – known informally as "mosque crawlers" – tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of attendees, even when there's no evidence they committed a crime.

The programs were built with unprecedented help from the CIA. Police recruited Rahman in late January, after his third arrest on misdemeanor drug charges, which Rahman believed would lead to serious legal consequences. An NYPD plainclothes officer approached him in a Queens jail and asked whether he wanted to turn his life around.

The next month, Rahman said, he was on the NYPD's payroll.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Tuesday. He has denied widespread NYPD spying, saying police only follow leads.

In an Oct. 15 interview with the AP, however, Rahman said he received little training and spied on "everything and anyone." He took pictures inside the many mosques he visited and eavesdropped on imams. By his own measure, he said he was very good at his job and his handler never once told him he was collecting too much, no matter whom he was spying on.

Rahman said he thought he was doing important work protecting New York City and considered himself a hero.

One of his earliest assignments was to spy on a lecture at the Muslim Student Association at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. The speaker was Ali Abdul Karim, the head of security at the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn. The NYPD had been concerned about Karim for years and already had infiltrated the mosque, according to NYPD documents obtained by the AP.

See the rest of the story at "Shamiur Rahman: NYPD Paid Me To 'Bait' Muslims Into Saying Things About Jihad, Terrorism".

In an "unusual" meeting, NYPD gathers press corps to address recent A.P. reports on surveillance of Muslim groups; Bloomberg successors timid

(Scroll below for Bloomberg successors to mayor, and their taking wait and see approach to NYPD profiling Muslims issue.)
From Capital New York:

By Joe Pompeo, 2:42 pm Feb. 24, 2012

The Lineup collects the media stories, big and small, that are on our radar each day.
A.P. vs. NYPD

Late yestserday afternoon, we got a tip that NYPD brass had rounded up all the local police beat reporters for a spontaneous meeting related to something that has become a perpetual thorn in the department's side in recent months: The Associated Press' ongoing probe of police surveillance of Muslim communities in and around the city.

Specifically, we were told, the meeting was convened in response to the latest installment in the series, which began last August—a report earlier this week that "Americans living and working in New Jersey's largest city were subjected to surveillance as part of the New York Police Department's effort to build databases of where Muslims work, shop and pray. The operation in Newark was so secretive even the city's mayor [Cory Booker] says he was kept in the dark."

Indeed, When the new A.P. report landed on Wednesday, Booker was furious, telling the Star-Ledger: "I have deep concerns and I am very disturbed that this might have been surveillance that was based on no more than religious affiliation." And so once again, the NYPD spun into damage control mode.

The Daily News reports:

At an unusual press briefing, chief spokesman Paul Browne said the NYPD operates under the tightest civil liberties regulations of any police department in the land.

“There's been a suggestion that what we are doing doesn't comport with legal requirements, and that's not the case,” Browne said. “Everything we're doing is done constitutionally.”

For the most part, both city tabloids have come down hard on the A.P. investigation in their opinion pages, painting the wire as unpatriotic and naive for questioning tactics that some would view as a necessary defense in the war on terror. Earlier this week, for instance, New York Post columnist Michael A. Walsh suggested that the A.P. "for months now has been waging a journalistic jihad against the NYPD and its counterterrorism tactics in the name of 'civil rights.'"

But the A.P. found a more sympathetic ear in today's News, which includes a piece from progressive columnist Juan Gonzalez in which he calls the NYPD program "religious profiling on steroids" and writes of the department's controversial spokesman: "Browne is one the most capable and likeable NYPD spokesman in decades. But he has been caught making so many false statements lately about the department’s anti-terrorism program that his credibility has been irreparably damaged."

VARYING QUALITY RESPONSES FROM BLOOMBERG SUCCESSORS FOR NYC MAYOR:
(From "Asked about Police surveillance of Muslims, Bloomberg's successors take a wait-and-see approach", Feb. 25, 2012)
From City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's spokesperson:

"Regarding the NYPD's actions in New Jersey and other jurisdictions, unless we know that laws were broken or someone's civil liberties were violated it is difficult to judge police techniques without knowing the specifics of the case," said Josh Isay, a spokesman for Quinn.

From former city comptroller and head of the pre-Bloomberg Board of Education, Bill Thompson:

“The NYPD must continue to be vigilant in protecting the people of New York City from terrorism," said Bill Thompson, the 2009 Democratic nominee for mayor and former city comptroller. "But to single out one segment of our diverse, religious community for surveillance without cause raises questions of fairness and equal justice.”

From Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, "who has called for a federal probe into whether the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy unfairly targets young black and Latino men (without calling for an outright halt to the practice), said the surveillance policy, too, needs a closer look," Capital New York said. Scott Stringer said:

"The New York Police Department has done an extraordinary job protecting our city from the ever-present threat of terrorism, no matter where it originates," Stringer said. "Whenever the police get wind of a potential threat, we expect them to pursue the matter with all deliberate speed and keep New York City safe. But it is troubling when people are subject to surveillance and investigation simply because they are members of a particular group. We need to ensure that our efforts to combat the threat of terrorism does not trample on the civil liberties that all citizens have a right to enjoy.”

From publisher Tom Allon:

"The surveillance and random checking of American citizens is an extremely complex issue that cannot be reduced to a sound bite," Allon said in a lengthy email. "'Profiling' is a loaded term that has somehow replaced 'probable cause' in law enforcement lexicon. We need to face realpolitik realities rather politically correct idealism. The people who attacked us 10 years ago and in 1993 were all Muslims. The few planned attacks that the NYPD has thwarted since then were also plotted by young Muslims ... If you randomly stop a fidgeting 20-year-old Muslim on the street or on the subway, this should be called `probable cause' rather than `profiling.'"

"[New York City Public Advocate] Bill de Blasio was traveling and couldn't be reached for comment," Capital New York wrote. CNY was not able to reach current city comptroller John Liu.

Democracy Now, AP: NYPD Tracked Muslim Students Far Beyond NYC; News Video Link

{BREAKING: Democracy Now! is streaming on its website, an interview between Amy Goodman and a Muslim college student that encountered an NYPD spy.}
The Associated Press has reported that the New York Police Department tracked Muslim college students far beyond New York City:
"NYPD monitored Muslim students all over Northeast: Names recorded in reports, even though they hadn't been accused of any crimes," February 18, 2012

The New York Police Department monitored Muslim college students far more broadly than previously known, at schools far beyond the city limits, including the elite Ivy League colleges of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, The Associated Press has learned.

Police talked with local authorities about professors 300 miles away in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students' names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.
Detectives trawled Muslim student websites every day and, although professors and students had not been accused of any wrongdoing, their names were recorded in reports prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

See this video from the Associated Press: http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/nypd-monitored-muslim-coeds-all-over-northeast-28354193.html.

Yet, as the Triangle Research Group reported early this month in a public release of its research, "Radical U.S. Muslims Little Threat, Study Says," as cited by Scott Shane in "The New York Times," February 7, 2012. As the New York Times reported, "Of about 14,000 murders in the United States last year, not a single one resulted from Islamic extremism, said [Charles] Kurzman, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina [and author of the report]."

The report this week of the NYPD monitoring Muslim students all over the Northeast follows on a damning revelation late last month that it had repeatedly shown a highly defamatory video, "The Third Jihad," as part of its training, to more than a thousand officers in its ranks. See: Michael Powell, "In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims," Janary 23, 2012.

New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg has staked his reputation on education. His legacy on respecting Muslims is rather poor, as evidenced by his police department's policies towards Muslims. These blemishes on his record follow on his unfortunate double standard in allowing Christian and Jewish days off from New York City public schools, but not for the Muslims' major holidays. See this example of several articles from summer, 2010: Asma T. Uddin, "The other Islam controversy in NYC," "Washington Post," August 10, 2010.

Undercover Operation Angers Brooklyn College Students

The NYPD thinks this college sophomore is a threat?

From "The Brooklyn Ink" blog.

By Omar Akthar, "Undercover Operation Angers Brooklyn College Students," Tue, Oct 11, 2011

Students at Brooklyn College reacted, at turns, with both outrage and acceptance over a report that the New York Police Department used undercover officers to infiltrate Muslim student groups on campus.
According to a CBS news report this morning, The Associated Press obtained documents that show that the NYPD has been sending undercover officers to schools and colleges like Brooklyn College to infiltrate Muslim student groups and monitor their activities.
“It’s definitely scary, it makes me think twice about what I say when I’m speaking to someone on the phone when I’m on campus,” said sophomore Faria Imtiaz, a member of the Muslim Students Association. “It shows that if it could happen to us, it could happen to anyone.”

This wasn’t her first brush with police surveillance. “The NYPD released a list of institutions that were under surveillance for potential Islamic fundamentalism, one of them turned out to be my high school,” she said. Still, she added, maybe actions like this are necessary in the times we live in.
Konstantinos Marinakis, a senior, supported the department’s actions.
Konstantinos Marinakis, Brooklyn College Student by Omar Bilal Akhtar
He said that while there should be surveillance, it shouldn’t be specific for only certain groups. “I don’t agree it should be specific groups, “ he said. “The NYPD should go undercover in schools to infiltrate all groups ”

But sophomore Elizabeth Allan called the operation racist, a violation of privacy, and an example of racial profiling.

The operation may, in fact, violate U.S. privacy laws—and may also jeopardize federal funding for the universities if the department were to hand over student records without their consent to the police, law professor Ramzi Kassen told the AP.
The City University of New York has had an understanding with the NYPD since 1992 that states that in non-emergency situations, police officers may enter CUNY premises only upon the request or approval of a CUNY official.
Jeremy Thompson, the Senior Director of Communications and Marketing at Brooklyn College said, “If these allegations prove correct, it is certainly something that has happened without our knowledge.”

According to documents obtained by the AP, the NYPD may have gained access to student records through working with campus security, under the pretense of working on gang or narcotics cases. This would be a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a federal statute, according to Richard Rainsberger, a consultant on college privacy laws told the AP. If the college is found to be violating this statute, it could lose all its federal funding.
Thompson said that it was not unusual for the college to cooperate with the NYPD. “I don’t know if there is any veracity to that claim or not, but I can tell you we have a very good relationship with the NYPD. Our public safety officers are in regular communication with the 70th precinct here,” he said. “But we are certainly bound by the FERPA, and so anything that would have been done as far as the release of student records or documents would have been under those guidelines.”
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