From the New York Post, January 7:The city has agreed to more stringent regulations on anti-terror cops in order to settle two federal lawsuits that claimed the NYPD violated constitutional rights by spying on Muslims.
The city will pay $2,033,416 in legal fees to the plaintiffs, but no monetary damages, and will add another layer of review to a committee that monitors its intelligence gathering. The NYPD will also remove a 92-page report, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” from its Web site.
“New York City’s Muslim residents are strong partners in the fight against terrorism, and this settlement represents another important step toward building our relationship with the Muslim community,” Mayor de Blasio said in a statement.
The report being referred to is not an anti-Islam screed. In fact, it goes out of its way to indicate that it is only referring to Al Qaeda style terrorism in the US. It added an extraordinary two-page disclaimer to mollify Muslims who felt that the report was Islamophobic:
NYPD understands that it is a tiny minority of Muslims who subscribe to al Qaeda’s ideology of war and terror and that the NYPD’s focus on al Qaeda inspired terrorism should not be mistaken for any implicit or explicit justification for racial, religious or ethnic profiling. Rather, the Muslim community in New York City is our ally and has as much to lose, if not more, than other New Yorkers if individuals commit acts of violence (falsely) in the name of their religion. As such, the NYPD report should not be read to characterize Muslims as intrinsically dangerous or intrinsically linked to terrorism, and that it cannot be a license for racial, religious, or ethnic profiling.But that wasn't enough for the plaintiffs.
The fact that this report, a well-researched backgrounder on Islamic extremism, was a target in the lawsuit indicates that the goal of the action wasn't to stop spying against Muslims but to shield Muslim terrorists in the US.
This is not just another report. It was praised by experts for how comprehensive it was.
One expert, Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President of the Rand Corporation, described it:
Although there have been informative analyses of the paths to violent jihad in individual countries, this is the most comprehensive review across national boundaries, including the terrorist conspiracies uncovered in the United States. The resulting model will undoubtedly become the basis for comparison with additional cases as they are revealed in future attacks or arrests.Alain Bauer, Criminologist at the Sorbonne University, similarly praised it:
The utility of the NYPD model, however, goes beyond analysis. It will inform the training of intelligence analysts and law enforcement personnel engaged in counterterrorist missions. It will allow us to identify similarities and differences, and changes in patterns over time. It will assist prosecutors and courts in the very difficult task of deciding when the boundary between a bunch of guys sharing violent fantasies and a terrorist cell determined to go operational has been crossed. Above all, by identifying key junctions in the journey to terrorist jihad, it should help in the formulation of effective and appropriate strategies aimed at peeling potential recruits away from a dangerous and destructive course.
We need to be able to move out of the culture of reaction, retrospect, and compilation. Only in this way can we arrive at the stage of forward thinking and enable early detection of the threats and dangers of the modern world, our modern world. This study is the NYPD's contribution to this essential process.It remains a valuable tool today especially in the wake of ISIS-inspired terrorism in the West.
A great resource for law enforcement is being removed from NYPD websites because of political correctness.
Muslims who are truly concerned about Muslim terrorism - and we are told that the vast majority are - should be in the forefront of demanding that this report remain online and available for law enforcement worldwide to catch the Islamists while partnering with moderate Muslims.
At this moment, the report is still available on the NYPD website as well as the website of the City of New York.
I uploaded the report to Scribd.
(h/t Irene)
