NYPD misled us on Muslim spying: Newark mayor

NEWARK, New Jersey-The Associated Press

Mohammed el-Sioufi, an accountant and vice president of the Islamic Culture Center, a mosque in Newark, is interviewed by the Associated Press about the New York Police Department's surveillance of the Muslim community in Newark, N.J. AP photo

The mayor and police director of New Jersey's largest city said Wednesday the New York Police Department misled their city and never told them it was conducting a widespread spying operation on Newark's Muslim neighborhoods. Had they known, they said, they never would have allowed it.

"If anyone in my police department had known this was a blanket investigation of individuals based on nothing but their religion, that strikes at the core of our beliefs and my beliefs very personally, and it would have merited a far sterner response," Newark Mayor Cory Booker said.

In mid-2007, the NYPD's secretive Demographics Unit fanned out across Newark, photographing every mosque and eavesdropping in Muslim businesses. The findings were cataloged in a 60-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, that served as a police guidebook to Newark's Muslims.

There was no mention of terrorism or any criminal wrongdoing.

Officials reacted strongly on Wednesday.

"It is deeply offensive for me to do blanket surveillance for no reason other than religious affiliation," said Booker, who called on his state's attorney general to investigate.

Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio was deputy chief of the department at the time. He said the NYPD asked to be shown around the city. New York police said it was part of an investigation but never revealed what it was about, DeMaio said.

"We really want to be clear: This type of activity is not what the Newark PD (police department) would ever do," he said.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was the top federal prosecutor in the state in 2007, said he didn't remember the NYPD ever approaching him about surveillance in the city or a threat that would justify it.

He called the Newark report "disturbing." He said Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa was looking into the report.

"The NYPD has at times developed a reputation of asking forgiveness rather than permission," he said.

Such surveillance has become common in New York City in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Nearly 3,000 Americans died when al-Qaida terrorists hijacked airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon near Washington and a field where one crashed in Pennsylvania.

Police have built databases showing where Muslims live, where they buy groceries, what Internet cafes they use and where they watch sports. Dozens of mosques and student groups have been infiltrated, and police have built detailed profiles of local ethnic groups, from Moroccans to Egyptians to Albanians.

But the NYPD's intelligence unit also operates far outside its jurisdiction and has worked to keep tabs on Muslims across the Northeast. The department has cataloged Muslim communities in Long Island; conducted undercover operations in New Brunswick, New Jersey; and has turned often innocuous Internet postings by Muslim student groups into police files.

The monitoring of Muslim college students across the Northeast drew sharp rebukes from administrators at Yale, Columbia and elsewhere earlier this week. But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued his most vigorous defense of his police department to date.

"The police department goes where there are allegations. And they look to see whether those allegations are true," he told reporters Tuesday. "That's what you'd expect them to do. That's what you'd want them to do. Remind yourself when you turn out the light tonight." NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not respond to a message seeking comment on the Newark effort Wednesday. He has previously denied the existence of the Demographics Unit.

The Newark police director at the time, Garry McCarthy, is now in charge of the Chicago Police Department. He said the NYPD initiated the operation and none of his officers participated.

Newark authorities who investigated how the NYPD operation was carried out concluded McCarthy received the 60-page report from the NYPD, according to a Newark official. The official, who insisted on anonymity because the inquiry was ongoing, said there was no evidence that McCarthy circulated the report to anyone else.

The goal of the report, like others the Demographics Unit compiled, was to give police at-their-fingertips access to information about Muslim neighborhoods. If police got a tip about an Egyptian terrorist in the area, for instance, they wanted to immediately know where he was likely to find a cheap room to rent, where he might buy his lunch and at what mosque he might attend Friday prayers.

There are no allegations of terrorism in the Demographics Unit reports, and the documents make clear that police were interested only in locations frequented by Muslims.

The canvass of businesses in Newark mentions Islam and Muslims 27 times. In one section of the report, police wrote that the largest immigrant groups in Newark were from Portugal and Brazil. But they did not photograph businesses or churches for those groups.