Settlement In Lawsuit Over NYPD's Surveillance Of Muslims Bringing A Long List Of Reforms To City's Policing

from the suing-the-cops-back-into-compliance-with-the-Constitution dept

The NYPD considers itself to be the finest police force in the nation, if not the world. But its track record says otherwise. It lost a lawsuit over its "stop and frisk" program, thanks to its unconstitutionality and appearance of racial bias. It is currently in the middle of a lawsuit related to illegal summons quotas -- one in which it destroyed documents it was ordered to preserve. And now, it has just lost another lawsuit related to its biased policing.

The NYPD's pervasive surveillance of the city's Muslim population violated civil liberties on a massive scale. Despite being given an incredible amount of leeway to pursue its counter-terrorist activities, the so-called "Demographics Unit" did useless things like pressure informants into making stuff up to justify surveillance efforts and designate entire mosques as terrorist entities. What it didn't do, however, is generate any useful intelligence.

The city has just settled with the plaintiffs in the Muslim surveillance lawsuit, which will bring with it a slew of reforms.

The proposed settlement includes modification of the guidelines along two principal lines: incorporating new safeguards and installing a civilian representative within the NYPD to reinforce all safeguards.

A civilian representative will be a welcome change from the internal "oversight" performed by the NYPD -- which has been pretty much nonexistent. The program was started by an ex-CIA officer who seemingly assumed he could treat US citizens with the same disregard as foreign nationals.

A long list of stipulations could bring about much-needed changes in NYPD counter-terrorist program.

• Prohibiting investigations in which race, religion, or ethnicity is a substantial or motivating factor
• Requiring articulable and factual information regarding possible unlawful activity before the NYPD can launch a preliminary investigation into political or religious activity
• Requiring the NYPD to account for the potential effect of investigative techniques on constitutionally protected activities such as religious worship and political meetings
• Limiting the NYPD’s use of undercovers and confidential informants to situations in which the information sought cannot reasonably be obtained in a timely and effective way by less intrusive means
• Putting an end to open-ended investigations by imposing presumptive time limits and requiring reviews of ongoing investigations every six months
• Installing a civilian representative within the NYPD with the power and obligation to ensure all safeguards are followed and to serve as a check on investigations directed at political and religious activities. The civilian representative must record and report any violations to the police commissioner, who must investigate violations and report back to the civilian representative. If violations are systematic, the civilian representative must report them directly to the judge in the Handschu case.
• Removing from the NYPD website the discredited and unscientific “Radicalization in the West” report, which justified discriminatory surveillance, and affirming that the report is not and will not be relied upon to open or prolong NYPD investigations

These reforms aren't set in stone yet. A still-pending class action suit over violations of the NYPD's Handschu Agreement (an agreement that was subverted by the CIA officer heading the Demographics Unit, who used post-9/11 terrorism fears to carve huge holes in the stipulation, which forbade the surveillance of First Amendment-protected activity) must be resolved before the proposed settlement can go into effect. Fortunately, the remaining hearing in that case involves comments from the plaintiffs, rather than an attempt by the city to dial back the proposed reforms.

The NYPD has a chance to salvage its reputation. The problem is, it doesn't see it that way, despite losing major lawsuits over two of its biggest programs. Without a doubt, the next few weeks will see plenty of criticism from the usual sources: District Attorney Cyrus Vance, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and, because there's apparently no way to shut him up, NYPD union boss Pat Lynch. Any statements will only make these officials look worse as they'll be arguing on behalf of the wholesale violation of civil liberties.

Filed Under: civil liberties, demographics unit, lawsuit, muslims, nypd, surveillance
Companies: aclu

Former FBI Agent: NYPD's Muslim-Spying Demographics Unit Was Almost Completely Useless

from the holds-several-'most-rights-violated'-trophies,-however dept

Certain demographics are desirable. 18-34? Taste-makers and early adopters. 35-49? Money. Muslim and New York City resident? Being a member of this group meant (until recently) having First Amendment-protected activities being closely scrutinized by the NYPD's now-defunct "Demographics Unit."

This special unit was recently disbanded, roughly a decade after it should have been, thanks to a new mayor and a new police commissioner. The unit was put together by a former CIA officer who used the post-9/11 attack climate to push for expansive surveillance of the city's Muslim population, including designating entire mosques as terrorist-related entities. Despite all the extra attention being paid to Muslims, not a single useful investigation resulted from this unit's work.

The surveillance being done by this unit so pervasively subverted civil liberties protections that not even the CIA could access the NYPD's files without breaking its internal rules. The same goes for the FBI, which has long partnered with the NYPD in its counter-terrorism efforts. Don Borelli, a former FBI agent, has written a piece for the New York Daily News, detailing why police commissioner Bill Bratton was right to disband the Demographics Unit.

Together, we were able to stop many threats — and save many lives — including a serious plot against the subways from Najibullah Zazi, an ethnic Afghan who grew up in Queens and went on to become an Al Qaeda operative.

Interestingly enough, the NYPD demographics unit had detailed files on Zazi's neighborhood in Flushing during the period in which he was becoming radicalized. It kept files on businesses and visited coffee shops believed to be hangouts for potential terrorists. The unit even visited the travel agency where Zazi bought his ticket to travel to Afghanistan for terrorism training.

So why wasn't Zazi identified until he was driving to New York from Denver to blow up the subway? Because the program was ineffective. The mission of the demographics unit was to spot the terrorists in the haystack, but again and again it failed to do so.

All haystack, no needle, like so many other surveillance programs. The unit overwhelmed itself in useless data, keeping it from finding what it needed when it mattered most. These data swamps built by investigative agencies have proven to be more dangerous than old-fashioned police work.

During my time with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, I read many reports derived from investigations conducted by the NYPD Intelligence Division, which may well have relied on the demographics unit's work. I was presented with many interesting facts about where people were attending Friday prayers and who belonged to various Muslim student associations.

But rarely did I learn anything I didn't already know through traditional investigations, much less anything that would have led me to open a terrorism investigation.

Adding to the mess here is the NYPD's twisted relationship with the FBI. While it clearly enjoys access to G-men and their tools, former police chief Ray Kelly often made it clear that his officers did superior work and that the FBI's production of information was too slow to be useful. Of course, FBI agents have said the same thing about the NYPD, particularly in the information department, where the sharing was usually a one-way street that flowed out of the FBI and into the NYPD's hands.

Beyond the antagonistic relationship is the Demographic Unit itself -- its own worst enemy. The former CIA officer who had a local judge rewrite guidelines to give the NYPD unprecedented permission for pervasive surveillance also managed to ensure that most info flowing back upstream to the FBI ended up being routed directly into the trash can.

Moreover, I wound up shredding some of these reports because they had no investigative value and, in my opinion, did not belong in any FBI file because they solely reported on what was First Amendment-protected activity.

Much like other failures to stop terrorist activity, the problems here were communication (too little) and information (too much). As Borelli notes, in his experience, it's been more useful to build trust than to endlessly spy, something the NYPD really hasn't made much effort to foster over the years. But its failure to do so means it has buried itself in data and alienated those who could bring an inside perspective. A decade's worth of spying resulted in nothing but violated rights.

Filed Under: demographics unit, fbi, muslims, new york city, nyc, nypd

NYPD Update: Stop-And-Frisk Now Under Federal Oversight; Muslim-Spying 'Demographics Unit' Disbanded

from the somewhere,-Mike-Bloomberg-is-choking-on-his-own-indignation dept

Time for an update on the NYPD scene. As you'll recall, both Mayor Bloomberg and Police Chief Ray Kelly exited their respective offices in their respective huffs, claiming the city would fall apart if the sanctity of the NYPD's Constitution-skirting programs (stop-and-frisk, the Muslim-watching Demographics Unit) weren't preserved.

The legal battle over the constitutionality of the stop-and-frisk took several turns, including the removal of the presiding judge for "appearances of partiality." Incoming mayor Bill de Blasio promised to drop the city's appeal of Judge Scheindlin's ruling, and oddly enough, actually did.

An attempt to keep the appeal going was filed by the union representing the NYPD, but this was shot down by the appeals court. It did, however, allow it to be part of the final negotiations. The end result was the installation of five years of oversight over the NYPD's controversial program in order to move it towards something more resembling compliance with the Constitution.

The apocalypse Bloomberg and Kelly claimed was unavoidable if stop-and-frisk was curbed has failed to materialize. Even before the ruling was handed down, the program had been scaled back, with 86% fewer stops being recorded in the first quarter of 2014 than in the same quarter of 2012. Despite this lack of pushing random people up against the wall, crime is down 13% compared to 2013. Was stop-and-frisk ever truly essential? Or was it simply something that became an all too easily abused "tool" of the NYPD? At this point, the numbers seem to indicate that stop-and-frisk had very little real effect on criminal activity.

More good news on the NYPD v. Constitution front: the infamous Muslim-spying wing of the NYPD -- the stupidly-named "Demographics Unit" -- has been disbanded. This program, started by a former CIA officer who leveraged the city's post-9/11 anxieties to craft major changes to guidelines governing the surveillance of New Yorkers, spent a considerable amount of time infiltrating and surveilling entire mosques under the pretense that each and every member was somehow related to ongoing counterterrorism investigations.

The investigations performed by this unit did considerable damage to the civil liberties of mosque attendees over the last decade, but failed to turn up any credible suspects, much less terrorism-related arrests. The unit's pervasive surveillance so thoroughly violated First and Fourth Amendment protections that the CIA and FBI were unable to avail themselves of the "intelligence" collected by the NYPD without violating federal guidelines. When even the CIA can't look at your investigative results for fear of violating its own minimal civil liberties protections, you know you've got a problem.

Bill Bratton, returning to the NYPD commissioner's office, seems to have realized that programs like the Demographics Unit ultimately do more harm than good. When heading the Los Angeles Police Department, he was approached with a similar idea for tracking that city's Muslim community. He had this to say then:

“A lot of these people came from countries where the police were the terrorists,” he said at the time. “We don’t do that here. We do not want to spread fear. We want to deal with criminals.”

The NYPD, before his return, had no such concerns. If anything, the NYPD actively created distrust -- both in the New York Muslim community and around the world, sending its officers uninvited to peer over the shoulders of local police and investigative units at scenes of terrorism activity in countries like Kenya and Bali.

The new NYPD is still staffed with the old NYPD, which means change will be slow and likely fought every step of the way. Muslims are understandably concerned that the public disbandment of the Demographics Unit will just result in the level of surveillance being unchanged, if only a bit more unfocused. Bratton seems to be nudging the department towards a more FBI-esque set of rules, which isn't ideal, but is certainly much better than the abusive behavior permitted under the NYPD's internal guidelines.

It does appear the NYPD will be moving towards something resembling an actual police force, rather than a law unto itself. Without Kelly and Bloomberg around to defend its every overstep, the NYPD can no longer expect to skirt the Constitution with impunity. But there's a long way to go to fix things, so any optimism must be tempered by the fact that good habits are tough to instill and bad habits are extremely hard to break. Five years of oversight is a start, but the city -- meaning the mayor and the police commissioner -- must be willing to hold its officers accountable.

Filed Under: demographics unit, nyc, nypd, profiling, stop and frisk