May 12, 2014, New York – In response to revelations in a Sunday New York Times article, “New York Police Recruit Muslims to Be Informers,” Muslim Advocates and the Center for Constitutional Rights released the following statement: 

Yesterday, our worst fears were confirmed that the New York City Police Department is continuing to recruit informants and target innocent American Muslims for surveillance based solely on their faith. Muslim Advocates and the Center for Constitutional Rights condemn the NYPD's activities reported in Sunday’s New York Times article “New York Police Recruit Muslims to Be Informers.” The article makes clear that the NYPD's announcement last month that it is disbanding the Zone Assessment Unit (formerly known as the Demographics Unit) does not reflect a change in the NYPD's practice of targeting Muslims and planting informants in New York's Muslim communities without any reason to believe that members of those communities are engaged in criminal activity.

 

According to the Times article, NYPD reports this year “showed that religion had become a normal topic of police inquiry in the city’s holding cells and lockup facilities. Some reports written by detectives after debriefing sessions noted whether a prisoner attended mosque, celebrated Muslim holidays or had made a pilgrimage to Mecca.” Thus, the victims of this practice were not asked to be informants relating to any of the petty crimes for which they were arrested, such as disputing a ticket or allegedly attempting to engage a prostitute; since those crimes obviously had nothing to do with their religious practices. The NYPD's unlawful assumption remains that members of entire Muslim communities are inherently suspect and can “provide visibility into the world of terrorism,” as the current head of the Intelligence Division is quoted in the article.

 

The revelation that the NYPD is continuing its discriminatory policing of Muslims eliminates any doubt that the three federal lawsuits challenging the Department’s practices should be pursued vigorously and that a federal court order is the only way to ensure that the NYPD will stop its unconstitutional practices.