NYPD to Settle Muslim Surveillance Lawsuits Under agreement, the agency must strengthen oversight of its surveillance practices, including adding a civilian attorney as a monitor By Pervaiz Shallwani
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nypd-settles-muslim-surveillance-lawsuit-1452187209
The New York Police Department must strengthen oversight of its surveillance practices as part of a settlement of two civil-rights lawsuits accusing the force of unfairly monitoring Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Under the settlement, filed in federal court Thursday, the police department agreed to changes that include reinstating an independent attorney to monitor surveillance by the NYPD’s intelligence unit—a role that was eliminated after 9/11.
The NYPD also agreed to several other changes in the surveillance rules, known as the Handschu guidelines, a set of policies initially put in place more than 30 years ago to make sure First Amendment rights aren’t violated during criminal probes.
The new guidelines include setting time limits for active investigations and putting in writing an existing NYPD policy that it is illegal to profile anyone solely on the basis of race or religion. The agreement also requires the NYPD to remove a controversial report on radicalization that has been on its website since 2007.
Both the police department and plaintiffs lauded the settlement for protecting the religious and political rights of people in the city without hampering the ability of authorities to conduct terrorism investigations.
“We hope the NYPD’s reforms help make clear that effective policing can and must be achieved without unconstitutional religious profiling of Muslims or any other communities,” said Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the plaintiffs in the case.
The settlement ends two of three civil-rights lawsuits filed by activist groups and Muslims after a series of articles in 2011 by the Associated Press reported that intelligence-unit officers infiltrated mosques and student groups in New York and New Jersey in what critics saw as racial and religious profiling.
The settlement was submitted to Manhattan federal Judge Charles Haight for approval. The city will pay about $1.6 million in attorneys’ fees as part of the agreement.
The NYPD has never acknowledged illegal monitoring of Muslims and makes no admission in the settlement that it acted improperly. NYPD officials said Thursday that, in some cases, the changes codify policies that are already being used.
ENLARGE “What we get is guiding principles. What we don’t lose is flexibility,” said John Miller, deputy commissioner of the NYPD’s counterterrorism and intelligence unit. The new guidelines mirror those designed by the U.S. attorney general and used by federal authorities during counterterrorism probes.
The revelations about surveillance of mosques and student groups led to distrust of the NYPD in the Muslim community and became a campaign issue for Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2013. Soon after taking office, New York Police Commissioner William Bratton began meeting with Muslim leaders in an effort to ease tensions and, months later, disbanded an intelligence unit that was accused of improperly conducting surveillance.
Thursday’s settlement doesn’t affect a separate case in New Jersey that was initially thrown out from federal court in Newark but later reinstated. In that case, 11 people have accused the NYPD of crossing state lines to gather evidence based on their ethnicity or religion.
The department, which officials say uses a series of tools including informants and undercover officers to gather information after receiving tips of potential illegal activity, has said officers didn’t act on any information gathered during the surveillance.
The Handschu rules were created in 1985 as part of a consent decree settling a 1971 case involving a group of Communist radicals who claimed the department spied on them and violated their rights.
Following the Sept. 11 attacks, the guidelines were loosened, despite objection from some of the plaintiffs in the settlement, after the NYPD successfully argued that it needed more leeway to authorize investigations and detect terrorists.
Under the guidelines announced Thursday, the attorney, who will be appointed by the mayor in consultation with the police commissioner, will serve as a third party-monitor at the monthly meetings of counterterrorism officials. The return of an outside attorney appears to satisfy a request by plaintiffs for a court-appointed monitor.
Also as part of the settlement, the NYPD agreed to take down a controversial report titled “Radical of the West” from its website. Critics argued that it justified discriminatory surveillance of Muslims.
The department also agreed to put in writing new timetables for investigations. Under the old guidelines, the NYPD had no duration for full investigations and a two-year ceiling on preliminary investigations.
From now on, preliminary investigations shouldn’t exceed 18 months, full investigations won’t last longer than three years and probes into suspected terrorism activities won’t extend beyond five years, with some exceptions. All of these time limits can be prolonged at the discretion of the deputy commissioner of intelligence.
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