Does the Police Department Profile? Should It?

Does the New York Police Department profile for potential terrorists - does it stop, arrest, search, or otherwise investigate a person on the assumption that his racial or ethnic identity makes him more likely to commit a certain type of crime?

The NYPD, like every Western law enforcement agency, indignantly denies profiling. Its spokesman, Paul Browne, said in August, "Racial profiling is illegal, of doubtful effectiveness, and against department policy."

But it does, in fact, profile.

Shahawar Matin Siraj

For proof, note evidence produced in the trial of Shahawar Matin Siraj, a 23-year-old illegal Pakistani immigrant, convicted on May 24 of planning to blow up the Herald Square subway station in New York City. The NYPD knew about his hatred for America and his predilection for violence only because it had monitored city mosques intensively.

A 50-year-old Egyptian immigrant, Osama Eldawoody, a paid police informant and the central witness against Siraj, said under cross-examination that he had rooted about mosques in Brooklyn and Staten Island, making about 575 visits during 13 months in 2003-04. His instructions, he testified, were to keep "his eyes and ears open for any radical thing." The detective running him, Stephen Andrews, confirmed under oath how Mr. Eldawoody "was supposed to be on the lookout for whatever was going on. His eyes and ears were to be open."

Mr. Eldawoody wore a wire and took notes on such topics as the number of people who attended a religious service, the duration of the service, the imam's name, an imam's search to buy a house, and the license plate numbers of worshippers' cars outside mosques. (Although Mr. Andrews testified that he eventually told Mr. Eldawoody to stop collecting these numbers, he did run them through a database.)

Likewise, an undercover Muslim NYPD detective of Bangladeshi origins, known pseudonymously as "Kamil Pasha," testified in the Siraj case about having been sent to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to be a "walking camera" among Muslims living there, to "observe, be the ears and eyes."

Significantly, the NYPD has no comparable program to surveil cathedrals, churches, chapels, synagogues, or the religious buildings of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Shintoists, animists, or anyone else.

Profiling worked brilliantly in this instance; Kamil Pasha had contact with Siraj 72 times. As a result, Joseph Goldstein wrote in The New York Sun, "Before police knew of a plot, the department already possessed detailed reports of Siraj's political views and his often violent and inflammatory statements, which recorded his satisfaction at the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and his support for Osama bin Laden."

Even after this information came out, Mr. Browne argued that his department "does not engage in profiling."

[When law enforcement lies, as it constantly does about profiling, public trust erodes.] Profiling is an obviously useful tool, so the solution lies in passing laws to permit the police to do so overtly and legally.

On the very day of Siraj's conviction, an intrepid Democratic assemblyman from Brooklyn, Dov Hikind, proposed such a law in the New York State Assembly. Bill A11536 would authorize law enforcement personnel "to consider race and ethnicity as one of many factors which could be used in identifying persons who can be initially stopped, questioned, frisked and/or searched."

In a clever act of political jujitsu, Mr. Hikind noted that in Grutter v. Bollinger, a major case concerning affirmative action in college admissions, the U.S. Supreme Court permitted making governmental decisions on the basis of race and ethnicity on two conditions: that doing so serves a "compelling governmental interest" and that these are not the only factors used in reaching decisions.

Mr. Hikind told the BBC that preventing terrorist attacks "is an even more compelling governmental interest" than education, making it therefore acceptable to factor race and ethnicity into what he called "terrorist profiling." A former New York City police commissioner, Howard Safir, the columnist Clarence Page, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee all have written or said that they agree with Mr. Hikind.

So do I, but with a caveat: While permitting racial and ethnic externals to be factored into snap decisions is a clear common-sense imperative, the ultimate goal is to know a person's world view. As I put it in 2004, "Islamism … prompts Islamist terrorism, not speaking Arabic."

For now, however, the Hikind bill does a great public service by establishing the legitimacy of profiling. It urgently needs to be passed.

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Sep. 25, 2006 update: For more information on "Kamil Pasha", note this excerpt from Moustafa Bayoumi, "Arab America's September 11" in the Nation.

Sade and four of his twentysomething friends sit at a hookah cafe almost underneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in Brooklyn. It's late, but the summer heat is strong and hangs in the air. They sit on the sidewalk in a circle, water pipes bubbling between their white plastic chairs.

Sade is upset. He recently found out that his close friend of almost four years was an undercover police detective sent to spy on him, his friends and his community. Even the guy's name, Kamil Pasha, was fake, which really irked the 24-year-old Palestinian-American. After appearing as a surprise witness at a recent terrorism trial in Brooklyn, Pasha vanished. That's when Sade (who doesn't want his last name used) discovered the truth.

"I was very hurt," he says. "Was it friendship or was he doing his job?" He takes a puff from his water pipe. "I felt betrayed." The smoke comes out thick and smells like apples. "How could I not have seen this? The guy had four bank accounts! He was always asking for a receipt wherever we went. He had an empty apartment: a treadmill, a TV and a mattress. No food, no wardrobe." He shakes his head. "We were stupid not to figure it out."

Apr. 3, 2008 update: For another example of the police profiling, see Erica Blake, "'The Trainer' begins terror trial testimony: U.S. informant describes making contacts," Toledo Blade.

July 5, 2008 update: Patrice O'Shaughnessy of the New York Daily News provides more information on work done by "Kamil Pasha" in "Undercover city detective finds hints of danger among mosques":

A young undercover city detective spent four years in the shadowy world of terrorist wanna-bes - taking part in jihadist discussions and training in parks in the dead of night - to get a handle on the homegrown threat. At great personal risk, he participated in everything from prayers at a mosque to martial arts training under cover of darkness to watching jihadist videos, with many of the activities laced with talk of killing, according to a source familiar with the undercover's investigations. ...

The detective spent his time interacting with informal groups of youths and men who shared extremist views - and his experiences illustrate what police say is the potential for radicalization of some elements in the community. He reported that after prayers at a neighborhood mosque, there were often private classes that included discussions about bombing different areas. The men discussed violent jihad in bookstores, private houses and on buses en route to paintball and shooting-range events.

He was invited to join in "bonding" activities like working out at a gym and martial arts training in parks at night, during which the group discussed ideological justifications for killing Westerners. He also watched military movies and jihadist videos with groups of young men in private homes. During one such evening, one man got so excited he punched a wall.

The detective reported that some youths became extremists after they traveled to their home countries; others went on the hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca - and came back fired up by imams who encouraged violence as a religious obligation. Others, after visiting relatives abroad, became enraged at their family's living conditions and blamed the U.S. for supporting nondemocratic governments. Although the youths talked about ways to attack the U.S., they lacked a strong leader who could help them follow through on a plan, the detective reported.

The undercover, a Muslim who came to America from Bangladesh when he was 7, gave only a glimpse of his work as an undercover when he testified during the trial of the Herald Square bomb plotters, the only known New York City homegrown plot to reach the jihadization stage. ... The detective appeared in Brooklyn Federal Court two years ago as the final witness at the four-week trial of Shahawar Matin Siraj, 23, a Pakistani immigrant who was convicted of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station during the Republican National Convention in 2004. The detective was not involved in that case, but testified that he had come across Siraj during his undercover work.

Testifying under the fake name of Kamil Pasha, he said he was taken from the Police Academy in October 2002 to be a "walking camera," eyes and ears, among Muslims. He interacted with groups in Brooklyn and elsewhere in the city. The detective has been involved in "numerous" investigations for the intelligence division, part of a cadre of undercovers who act as listening posts.

Feb. 25, 2009 update: A parallel instance of investigating mosques has been announced in Los Angeles with the arrest of Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, 34. For one account, see "Bail Set for Man Arrested by Terrorism Task Force."

Related Topics:  Counter-terrorism, Muslims in the United States, Terrorism receive the latest by email: subscribe to daniel pipes' free mailing list