NYPD Demographics Unit Conducts Suspicionless Surveillance of Muslim Communities
From at least 2002 through 2014, the NYPD's secret Intelligence Division — aided by CIA officers embedded in the department — mapped and monitored Muslim communities, mosques, student groups, and businesses across New York and surrounding states without any predicate of criminal suspicion, creating a chilling effect on religious speech and association.
Beginning in 2002, the New York Police Department's Intelligence Division, working with CIA officers detailed to the department, established a covert Demographics Unit that systematically mapped Muslim communities throughout New York City and neighboring states. Undercover officers and informants attended mosques, monitored Muslim student associations at universities, catalogued halal restaurants, bookstores, and community organizations, and eavesdropped on conversations — all without any individualized suspicion of criminal activity. The Associated Press exposed the program in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series beginning in 2011. In 2012 NYPD officials acknowledged in court that the Demographics Unit had never produced a single lead or terrorism investigation in more than six years of operation. The ACLU and Muslim civil rights groups sued; in 2014 the NYPD announced it was disbanding the Demographics Unit. A 2016 federal court settlement in Hassan v. City of New York required the NYPD to implement oversight reforms, acknowledging that the surveillance had stigmatized an entire religious community.