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New Details Emerge on NYPD Spy Unit

HeadlineSep 01, 2011

The Associated Press has provided new details on how ethnic groups were targeted by secretive intelligence cooperation between the CIA and the New York City Police Department in the years following the 9/11 attacks. According to the AP, the NYPD’s so-called “Demographics Unit” dispatched plainclothes officers into ethnic communities throughout New York City. The officers have reportedly used informants, known as “mosque crawlers,” to monitor sermons, even without evidence of wrongdoing. The NYPD has also scrutinized imams, taxi cab drivers, food cart vendors and other jobs often done by Muslims. The report claimed an unprecedented level of CIA cooperation made the surveillance possible. The NYPD has denied the unit’s existence. But on Wednesday the AP released another article citing a memo from the unit’s supervisor and a PowerPoint presentation which described the unit in detail and repeatedly featured the department’s logo. According to the documents, the Demographics Unit is comprised of 16 officers speaking at least five languages and is the only squad of its kind known to be operating in the country. In addition to New York City, the unit has also mapped neighborhoods in Connecticut and New Jersey. The squad has maintained a long list of “ancestries of interest” and received daily reports on life in Muslim neighborhoods.

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