NJ Judge Throws Out Lawsuit Challenging NYPD Surveillance Of Muslims

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

NEW YORK — The New York Police Department's intelligence unit didn't discriminate against Muslims with far-reaching surveillance aimed at identifying "budding terrorist conspiracies" at Newark mosques and other locations in New Jersey, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.

In a written decision filed in federal court in Newark, U.S. District Judge William Martini dismissed a civil rights lawsuit brought in 2012 by eight Muslims who alleged the NYPD's surveillance programs were unconstitutional because they focused on religion, national origin and race. The suit had accused the department of spying on ordinary people at several mosques, restaurants and grade schools in New Jersey since 2002.

The plaintiffs, including the former principal of a grade school for Muslim girls, "have not alleged facts from which it can be plausibly inferred that they were targeted solely because of their religion," Martini wrote. "The more likely explanation for the surveillance was to locate budding terrorist conspiracies."

The judge added: "The police could not have monitored New Jersey for Muslim terrorist activities without monitoring the Muslim community itself. ... The motive for the program was not solely to discriminate against Muslims, but to find Muslim terrorists hiding among the ordinary law-abiding Muslims."

Read more: http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/b4968a3de85f4cbc96d088141905ebac/US--NYPD-Intelligence-NJ

[Blue_Tires]

1. "NJ Judge Upholds Police Right to Racially Profile"

[AtheistCrusader]

2. What the hell kind of twisted logic is that...

This is a legal justification for profiling.

[msanthrope]

3. Using the judge's 'logic' if I declare I am looking for instances of Black voter fraud, I am

not racially targeting Blacks.

This is a GWB terror-appointee judge. Sooooooo not surprised.

[Kelvin Mace]

4. So, they were monitoring for "Muslim terrorist activities"

which meant they had to "monitor Muslims".

I guess all the other terrorist groups were just getting a pass.

[Nanjing to Seoul]

5. Wow. Bills of Attainder in all their forms ARE constitutional. Who woulda thunk?

Next, the State will pass a retroactive law against some form of muslim culture and a judge will allow it, invalidating the 1st amendment and the Ex Post Facto Law clause.

[cosmicone]

6. How long before we have internment camps for Muslims?

This is sick ... presumed guilt by ethnicity .... sheeeesh

[MicaelS]

7. WTF was the NYPD doing spying in New Jersey?

That is outside their jurisdiction. And IIRC, they didn't even notify New Jersey they were doing it. Fucking Bloomberg.

[RiverNoord]

8. This would almost certainly be overturned on appeal.

You can't argue someone is not being 'targeted solely because of their religion' and then say that the motive of the program was to search for violent people solely among adherents to their religion.

Piece of garbage sitting on the Bench. Just great.