Just another excuse to profile

The New York City Police have taken racial profiling to a higher level, courtesy of our tax dollars.

And now that the truth has come to light, los federales are scrambling for cover. Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the Justice Department will investigate the activities of the NYPD - after giving lawmakers the impression that such an investigation was already underway.

According to an exhaustive investigation by the Associated Press, the NYPD carried out a years-long surveillance program targeting Muslims, with funding provided by the CIA. The police compiled a database of where Muslims lived, where they shopped, where they prayed and where they watched sports. The police even compiled information on Muslims living outside the city in New Jersey and on Long Island.

"I don't know even if the program as it has been described in the news media was an appropriate way to proceed, was consistent with the way in which the federal government would have done these things," said Holder, who was born in the Bronx and described New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly as a personal friend. "I simply just don't know the answers to those questions at the beginning stages of this matter."

Because, Mr. Holder, the fact that someone prays to a god named Allah means that they must immediately come under suspicion by the state. Los federales have used 9/11 as the excuse for a campaign to deny Muslims of their civil liberties for way too long.

At the NYPD, however, such monitoring was common, former police officials said. Federal law enforcement officials told the AP that the mosque itself was never under federal investigation and they were unaware the NYPD was monitoring it so closely. According to secret police files obtained by the AP, the NYPD instructed its officers to watch the mosque and, as people came and went from the Friday prayer service, investigators were to record license plates and photograph and videotape those attending. The file offered no evidence of criminal activity. 

The FBI also would be prohibited from keeping police files on innocuous statements that imams made during sermons, which the NYPD did. In addition, the FBI would not be allowed to keep police files on Muslim students for discussing academic conferences online and would not be allowed to build databases of Americans who changed their names to ones sounding Arabic, which the NYPD did.

Funny, but I don't recall white Christians coming under suspicion after the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Most of our home-grown terrorists happen to be white folks who go to Protestant churches.

Are the police tracking down where they live, work, shop and pray?

But,.wait, you say. How can we figure out who the violent white Christians are and who the "normal" ones are? We can't possibly follow them all around and track where they go and who they see. But those Muslims, you see, they look different. We can figure out who they are.

H/T Democracy Now!