Inspector General Finds NYPD's Surveillance Of Muslims Routinely Violated Consent Decree Guidelines

TechDirt

Following two lawsuits against the NYPD for its pervasive, rights-violating surveillance of the city's Muslims, the department's Inspector General took a look at a sampling of cases from 2010-2015 to see if the Handschu Agreement -- crafted in 1985 and heavily modified in 2002 -- was being followed. The short answer is "No." So is the long answer [PDF].

The guideline was part of a consent decree created in response to pervasive NYPD surveillance of activities protected by the First Amendment, even when no unlawful activity was suspected. The guideline worked for awhile, but the 9/11 attacks changed that. The NYPD brought in two former CIA employees who decided to turn a domestic law enforcement agency into Langley on the Hudson. Former CIA officer David Cohen used terrorism fears to compel a judge to significantly modify the Handschu Agreement.

From that point on, the NYPD steadily abused the revamped agreement. Its "Demographics Unit" designated entire mosques as terrorist entities, placed the city's Muslims under surveillance, and -- best of all -- generated zero leads.

The Inspector General's report points out that the NYPD couldn't even comply with the relaxed, post-9/11 Handschu Agreement. Instead, the Demographics Unit copy-pasted justifications for pervasive surveillance and passed them up the ladder to the rubber stamps handling the approval process.

OIG-NYPD’s investigation found that NYPD, while able to articulate a valid basis for commencing investigations, was often non-compliant with a number of the rules governing the conduct of these investigations. For example, when applying for permission to use an undercover officer or confidential informant, the application must state the particular role of the undercover in that specific investigation, so that the need for this intrusive technique can be evaluated. NYPD almost never included such a fact-specific discussion in its applications, but instead repeatedly used generic, boilerplate text to seek such permission. Tellingly, this boilerplate text was so routine that the same typographical error had been cut and pasted into virtually every application OIG-NYPD reviewed, going back over a decade.

The NYPD's response [PDF] to the report disputes the accusation of using boilerplate permission slips. But that's all it does. It fails to explain how each individual request somehow contained the same typographical error. Repeatedly. For fourteen years. [MORE]