NYPD Found to Be Secretly Targeting Muslim Students

The Associated Press at the Huffington Post has found out that the New York Police Department took it upon themselves to spy on Muslim college students that might be a threat to America.

NYPD monitored Muslim students at Ivy League schools, University of Pennsylvania and Yale.

Muslim student websites were monitored every day. In reports prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, students’ and professors’ names were recorded from the websites, even though they had not been accused or charged of anything.

The NYPD refers to Muslim student associations as MSA’s. Police spokesman Paul Browne provided a list to the Associated Press of 12 people who had been arrested or convicted of a crime having to do with terrorism. These 12 people had also once been members of Muslim student associations.

To make his case, Browne identified Jesse Morton, a man who confessed to threatening the creators of “South Park” this month. Morton also tried to recruit followers at Stony Brook University on Long Island.

Twelve cases of terrorists who were once part of a Muslim student association do not allow for so much speculation on other innocent peoples’ activities.

“As a result (of the list of 12 terrorists), the NYPD deemed it prudent to get a better handle on what was occurring at MSAs,” Browne said in an email to the AP at Huffington Post.

Aimee Epps, freshman at UT majoring in graphic design said, “The NYPD does not have the right to do this at all. We need to keep our nation safe, but this is just racism right here. People who are terrorizing our country would not be in college studying to get a job.”

Brenna Meath, sophomore at UT majoring in marine biology, said, “Unless there was a huge conspiracy where MSA’s all over the country are banding together to take America down, the NYPD should have conducted their spying more discretely.”

Browne said police collected information available to the public while monitoring student websites. He said they did this only between 2006 and 2007.

Siarra Sherako, sophomore majoring in forensic science at UT said, “This is pretty much racism. That’s automatically categorizing all Muslims. I understand because of security, but I don’t get what students would be doing that would harm America.”

On a larger scale, though, the Muslim religion links them all together, just as a squad car and a badge link all cops together. There are plenty of dirty cops like there are plenty of terrorists. Take a minute and look at the larger scale where the majority of Muslims are good, friendly, peace-loving people. The majority of police officers, as well, are fair, honest cops that are interested in public safety.

Sherako said, “It is an invasion of privacy because schools do not have any knowledge of it so they cannot even monitor who is watching their students, which does not let college maintain safety.

Recently, the AP has uncovered that the NYPD with help from the CIA, has monitored Muslims where they eat, shop, worship and go to school.

Kelly and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg keep saying police only follow legitimate leads, but no monitored people have done anything wrong or given police reason to suspect foul play.

“I see a violation of civil rights here,” Tanweer Haq, chaplain of the Muslim Student Association at Syracuse told the Huffington Post. “Nobody wants to be on the list of the FBI or the NYPD or whatever. Muslim students want to have their own lives, their own privacy and enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that everybody else has.”

An undercover officer attended a whitewater rafting trip April 21, 2008 along with a Muslim college group. He recorded everyone’s names and in police intelligence files kept track of how many times they prayed.

The goal of going on the trip had to have been to try to catch the Muslim students plotting against the American government. This officer’s time would have been much better spent studying the Muslim religion rather than scheming for what he thinks is a good cause.

Epps said, “For police to go in when no one knows that they are there, not even faculty, is just unconstitutional. That is not how our country should be operating.”

In October, the AP said they had undercover officers in the Muslim Student Associations at City College, Brooklyn College, Baruch College, Hunter College, City College of New York, Queens College, La Guardia Community College and St. John’s University. All those colleges are within the New York City limits.

It was later found out that there was a student informant was secretly at Syracuse and police were also at Rutgers college in New Jersey.

A report from Jan. 2, 2009 described officers going to Buffalo to meet with the Sheriff’s Department there “to develop assets jointly in the Buffalo area, to act as listening posts within the ethnic Somalian community.”

Epps said the investigations are “not worthwhile at all. Having people pretend to be students is taking it way too far.”

Universities were unaware that their students were being watched, which makes students wonder the power that police forces actually have.

“I wonder if they are watching me,” Sherako said. “It is scary that they have so much power.”

Anna Westerholm can be reached at anna.westerholm@spartans.ut.edu.