NYC settles lawsuits over Muslim surveillance by police

“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”. Civil rights groups sued the agency in 2013 claiming it neglected the Handschu guidelines, a set of surveillance rules put in place in response to the surveillance of war protesters in the 1960s and ’70s. In one, leaders from mosques and other Islamic community and religious organizations alleged that the NYPD unfairly targeted them in anti-terror dragnets due to their religion.

In the settlement reached on Thursday, the NYPD agreed to erect new barriers preventing officers from launching investigations that is largely based around a suspect’s race, religion or ethnicity.

Prohibiting investigations in which race, religion or ethnicity is a substantial or motivating factor.

The settlement is a win not only for the plaintiffs in the lawsuits, but it is also a relief for Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has promised to reform the police department and has called NYPD’s intrusive investigations of the Muslim community in the NY area “deeply troubling”.

Police officials insisted the agreement, while requiring more specific guidelines and transparency, mostly formalizes safeguards that were already in place.

The lawsuit came on the heels of a number of investigative reports by the Associated Press that showed the NYPD had created detailed maps of mosques, Muslim-owned businesses, Muslim student associations, and social venues frequented by Muslims in NY and the surrounding states.

“The civilian representative is a new procedural safeguard that will serve as a check on investigations at political and religious activities”, Lieberman said.

The city admits no wrongdoing, and no damages will be paid.

The final agreement “will curtail practices that wrongly stigmatize individuals” while making investigations “more effective by focusing on criminal behavior”, said Arthur Eisenberg, legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The mayor, under the deal, will appoint a civilian attorney from outside the NYPD to ensure the department’s work follows the established guidelines. “What we don’t lose is flexibility”, said John Miller, deputy commissioner of the NYPD’s counterterrorism and intelligence unit.

In April 2014, police announced the disbanding of the Demographics Unit, a deeply controversial and heavily criticised group that sent undercover officers to spy on local Muslims.

The Handschu litigation had been guiding the NYPD’s surveillance activities in New York City, which included independent oversight, until the NYPD argued and won its removal after the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. -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.