NEW YORK — New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly faced pointed questions Thursday about police surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods as the City Council discussed whether it needed more oversight of a department that has become one of the most aggressive domestic-intelligence agencies in the U.S.
Kelly’s testimony before a legislative committee and a packed room of onlookers marked the first time he has been extensively questioned since The Associated Press disclosed in August that police had scrutinized Muslim communities, often not because of accusations of wrongdoing but because of residents’ ethnicity. The department has sent plainclothes officers to eavesdrop in those communities, helping police build databases of where Muslims shop, eat, work and pray.
Kelly defended the department he transformed in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said such community-mapping programs were essential for police to identify imminent threats.
“Establishing this kind of geographically based knowledge of the city’s communities saves precious time in deterring fast-moving plots,” he said, adding that such programs were lawful and did not constitute racial or ethnic profiling.
Asked whether the NYPD conducted similar mapping of Irish communities, Kelly replied: “We don’t do it ethnically. We do it geographically.”
The council controls the police budget and has the authority to scrutinize police programs. But since 9/11, it has done little to oversee the police department as its intelligence apparatus grew.
Peter Vallone, the committee chairman, has said Kelly privately informed him about some of the NYPD’s tactics, but Vallone said they are too sensitive to be discussed at council meetings. After Thursday’s hearing, he said nobody in city government is probably qualified to have oversight of such an expert intelligence operation but said some further oversight is probably needed, perhaps from a federal source.
