NYPD Undercover "Converted" To Islam To Spy On Brooklyn College Students: Gothamist. Muslim women participate in the 2nd annual New Horizons gathering on June 5, 2011 in Brooklyn (Getty Images) On the leafy Midwood campus of Brooklyn College, a lecture at the school’s Islamic Society had just ended when a woman stood up and asked to take the Shahada, the Muslim testimony of faith. Nobody knew the woman with light skin and dark hair, who appeared to be in her twenties. In a voice that lilted up at the end of each sentence, she began professing her new beliefs. “Melike Ser” or “Mel,” was not a student and had no apparent connections to the school, but the students embraced her anyway, excited about her conversion.
This past April, four years after Mel’s public act of faith, two Queens residents, Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui, were arrested and charged with allegedly planning to build a bomb. “I felt violated,” said Jehan, 30, who met Mel years ago in the Brooklyn College ISO prayer room. “You trust someone, you talk to them. It was also a question of faith. Off duty, black cops in New York feel threat from fellow officers - Al Arabiya News. By Michelle Conlin | Reuters, New York Wednesday, 24 December 2014 From the dingy donut shops of Manhattan to the cloistered police watering holes in Brooklyn, a number of black NYPD officers say they have experienced the same racial profiling that cost Eric Garner his life. Garner, a 43-year-old black man suspected of illegally peddling loose cigarettes, died in July after a white officer put him in a chokehold.
His death, and that of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, has sparked a slew of nationwide protests against police tactics. On Saturday, those tensions escalated after a black gunman, who wrote of avenging the black deaths on social media, shot dead two New York policemen. The protests and the ambush of the uniformed officers pose a major challenge for New York Mayor Bill De Blasio. What’s emerging now is that, within the thin blue line of the NYPD, there is another divide - between black and white officers. Ex-police chief skeptical Studies find inherent bias. How the NYPD is using social media to put Harlem teens behind bars | The Verge.
The mountains of digital media posted online are a tangled web of connections In November of 2011, the crew life caught up with them. Asheem was arrested on conspiracy charges as part of gang raid that targeted the Goodfellas. Five months later, Jelani was arrested and charged with a double attempted murder charge following a shooting in the neighborhood. Social media evidence was at the center of the older brother’s case, and the the family says online activity figured into the arrest of the younger brother as well.
The story of the Henry brothers highlights a new reality for teenagers growing up at the intersection of social media, street gangs, and mounting law enforcement surveillance. For those coming of age in gang-saturated areas, the mountains of digital media posted online are a tangled web of connections that can be used to lock up violent perpetrators—but can also ensnare the innocent along with them. "I knew them all my life, and we always had each other’s back. Street artist behind satirical NYPD "Drone" posters arrested. NYPD for hire: how uniformed New York cops moonlight for banks | Naomi Wolf. I was surprised two weeks ago to walk into my local TD Bank, on Greenwich Avenue in the West Village, New York to find that the security officer who was usually standing by, on alert, had been replaced by a uniformed, armed, radio-carrying New York Police Department officer, Officer Battle.
I confirmed from him that he was, in fact, an NYPD officer – and was working part-time for TD bank. Of course, this raised red flags for me. After the violent crackdown on Occupy Wall Street in November of 2011, when that group was having some of its most significant successes in protests and actions that challenged private banks and Wall Street institutions, many wondered what had motivated the unexpected aggression against protesters by local police officers tasked, at least overtly by municipal law, with upholding their first amendment rights. The NYPD became, at the time, coordinated in its crackdown once Occupy had started to target banks. The answer is yes. "I'd remove them," he said. OCCUPY WALL STREET BEST MSM Footage NYPD Police Brutality. NYPD Arrests 700 #OccupyWallStreet Protesters On The Brooklyn Bridge.
An Important Video to Watch: Pepper-Spray by a Cruel and Cowardly NYC Cop - James Fallows - National. (Update below.) Unless there is something faked about this video, which is on the New York Times' City Room site and is based on annotation and slow-mo apparently from USLaw.com, a uniformed New York City police officer abused power in a way that was cruel and cowardly during yesterday's Wall Street protests. It's worth the time to watch. He walks up; unprovoked he shoots Mace or pepper spray straight into the eyes of women held inside a police enclosure; he turns and walks away quickly (as they scream, wail, and fall to the ground clawing at their eyes) in a way familiar from hitmen in crime movies; and he discreetly reholsters his spray can.
You may have already seen this. If you haven't, it is worth knowing about. If this is what it looks like, it is outrageous. The mayor and others should say something. Police officers make countless hard decisions every day, often at the risk of their own safety or lives. NYPD CIA Anti-Terror Operations Conducted In Secret For Years. NEW YORK (Associated Press)-- Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Police Department has become one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies, targeting ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government, an Associated Press investigation has found. These operations have benefited from unprecedented help from the CIA, a partnership that has blurred the line between foreign and domestic spying. The department has dispatched undercover officers, known as "rakers," into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to officials directly involved in the program.
They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing. A veteran CIA officer, while still on the agency's payroll, was the architect of the NYPD's intelligence programs. U.S. New Jersey Muslims sue to protect their rights from NYPD spying | Ayesha Kazmi. Thursday 7 June, in a historic move, eight Muslims from New Jersey filed a federal lawsuit against the City of New York. The case, Hassan et al v City of New York, is the first ever to challenge the NYPD's intelligence programmes.
The lawsuit seeks to remedy the targeting of Muslims for surveillance "based solely upon their religion" by the New York City Police Department. In addition, plaintiffs are seeking to end the NYPD surveillance programme, which the lawsuit calls unconstitutional, and to secure the destruction of any and all data and information gathered by the NYPD as a result of unlawful spying.
A quick glance through leaked NYPD intelligence reports on Muslim communities in New York City and Newark, New Jersey should make Americans feel uneasy about the activities of law enforcement in the United States. Three months ago, the Associated Press released more evidence that New York's finest went far out of its jurisdiction to conduct unwarranted surveillance on Muslim Americans.
Is The NYPD's "Protect & Serve" Policy A Thing Of The Past? Did NYPD "Undercover Agent" Try to Suborn Tarek Mehanna into a "Terrorist Plot"? My arrest and trial had little to do with “terrorism.” The overwhelming majority of “terrorism” cases in America can fit into a category in which the FBI picks the gullible Muslim youth, sends an undercover agent to “befriend” him, and over a period of time, prod him to agree to carry out some attack.
The agreement is recorded on tape. The undercover FBI agent offers the kid weapons, and arrests him as soon as he is about to proceed with the so-called “plot.” While the intended impression is that the Feds swooped in to save the day, the reality is that they “foiled” their own plot. An artificial victory, and this is the formula which you see every other day when you read the news, whose purpose is to compensate for the lack of authentic “terror plots.”
The government attempted this strategy with me, but failed. In late 2005, I was approached by an individual whom I’d never met. Two years later, I found myself here in a Plymouth jail awaiting trial on terrorism charges. (To be continued…)