The NYPD: Anti-Muslim Bigots?
Each year, September 11th serves not only as a time of reflection for lost loved ones but also as a benchmark of sorts for America's war against radical Islamic fundamentalism. The ongoing question of national security is now reflexively framed in the context of 9/11. Are we safer now than on 9/11? Is Al Qaeda stronger than it was on 9/11? Do we have the intelligence and the military resources to prevent another 9/11? And so forth.
The New York Police Department lives almost literally in the shadow of 9/11. Since that horrific day, the NYPD has steadily and consistently ramped up its counterterrorism operations in order to protect the city from more attacks. In fact, it is more heavily engaged in counterterrorism initiatives than any non-federal agency in the United States. It operates what is likely the most sophisticated and wide-ranging counterterrorism program of any municipal law enforcement agency in the world, and its work has drawn a good deal of controversy.
The NYPD's success in foiling seven post-9/11 terror plots lies largely with a vigorous counterterrorism task force that actively engages in intelligence gathering and public monitoring. The task force's actions have often drawn the ire of the American Civil Liberties Union. One of the ACLU's most vocal stances was against the NYPD's plan to use thousands of surveillance cameras in the downtown area of Manhattan. The cry that was raised was that this was an invasion of privacy. Nobody wants Big Brother watching over their shoulder, but what expectation of privacy should people really have in a park, on a street, or in any other public place? Just the same, the NYPD instituted public security privacy guidelines to address these concerns.
The Muslim-American community also filed grievances against the NYPD for a 2007 report it compiled entitled Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat. This report addressed the theory of homegrown radicalism and spoke to the fact that more and more terrorist attacks and terror cells are originating within the target countries rather than from abroad. Muslim groups believed that the report unfairly portrayed all Muslims as dangerous people with radical tendencies. The NYPD re-released the report with a two-page statement that indicated that the Muslim community at large was not "intrinsically dangerous or intrinsically linked to terrorism."
Just last week, the Muslim American Civil Liberties Union stated that the NYPD did not go far enough to publicize this statement.
I encourage you to take a look at the original report. See if you think it portrays all Muslims in a negative light or if it is simply reporting the facts about the terrorist onslaught that has plagued the world these past eight years.