25.01.2017 - 17:49 [ Adam Goldman, Matt Apuzzo / associated press ]

With cameras, informants, NYPD eyed mosques

(23.2.2012) „It seems horrible to me that the NYPD is treating an entire religious community as potential terrorists,“ said civil rights lawyer Jethro Eisenstein, who reviewed some of the documents and is involved in a decades-old, class-action lawsuit against the police department for spying on protesters and political dissidents. The lawsuit is known as the Handschu case.

The documents provide a fuller picture of the NYPD‘s unapologetic approach to protecting the city from terrorism. Eisenstein said he believes that at least one document, the summary of statements about the Danish cartoons, showed that the NYPD is not following a court order that prohibits police from compiling records on people who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights.

„This is a flat-out violation,“ Eisenstein said. „This is a smoking gun.“