Muslim leaders from throughout New Jersey voiced their grave concerns today to state and federal law enforcement officials about the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslim groups in Newark in 2007, but they came away without the investigation they demanded.
About 20 representatives from the religious community said the private, three-hour summit, held at the state Attorney General’s Office in Trenton, was a friendly but frank discussion about the NYPD’s activities in the Garden State.
“I’m comfortable with our discussion today,” said Aref Assaf, president of the American Arab Forum in Paterson, who indicated before the meeting he would settle for no less than an investigation. “I feel the result will be announced very soon that will meet our minimum expectation.”
The meeting came after a week of escalating tension between officials east and west of the Hudson River over a 60-page NYPD report, disclosed last month by the Associated Press, that catalogued Muslim businesses, mosques and other locations in Newark.
Assaf said Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa told those attending he would not open a formal investigation of the NYPD until his office could determine what legal authority, if any, it has to take action against a police department in another state.
Paul Loriquet, a spokesman for Chiesa, said in a statement that the summit was the “beginning of an open, ongoing, and productive dialogue with New Jersey’s Muslim-American community.”
“We will continue to reach out to the community and keep the communication channels open as we move forward in our fact finding,” Loriquet said.
Assaf also said that while state officials condemned the blanket profiling of Muslims based only on their religion, they could not say that the NYPD’s spying in New Jersey had ceased.
“Oftentimes they’re here without us knowing about it, and this is actually a revelation that’s disturbing to me,” Assaf said.
Amin Nathari, a spokesman for Newark’s Muslim Community Leadership Coalition, said it seemed possible that state officials might revoke two executive orders signed in 2005 by Gov. Richard Codey that granted the NYPD limited authority to operate in New Jersey,
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw more action on that in the future,” Nathari said.
Aside from Chiesa, authorities at the meeting included Michael Ward, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark Division; Paul Fishman, U.S. attorney for New Jersey; Edward Dickson, chief of the state Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness; and Maj. Gerald Lewis of the State Police. Neither Newark officials nor representatives from the NYPD attended the summit.
Fishman said after the meeting that he wanted the Muslim community to know that his office, as well as the U.S. Justice Department, takes their concerns seriously. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week he was reviewing requests to investigate the NYPD.
Before the meeting, Muslim leaders said the recognition of their outrage was important.
“We want them to take it seriously and to know that the civil rights of the Muslim-American community have been violated and these are serious allegations,” said Nadia Kahf, a private attorney and chairwoman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in New Jersey.
New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, attending a Fordham Law School alumni luncheon on Wall Street today, said his department’s monitoring of Muslim college student groups helped lead investigators to “very dangerous individuals.”
In a transcript of his remarks, Kelly said anyone who suggests the police department’s monitoring of websites, visiting of public places or mapping of neighborhoods is “unlawful” has “either not read, misunderstood or intentionally obfuscated” legal guidelines restricting its intelligence activities.
On Friday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg also defended the police department, saying in a radio interview that officers did nothing more than any other citizen could do.
That interview came two days after Gov. Chris Christie criticized the NYPD on radio station 101.5 FM’s “Ask the Governor” program.
“I know they think their jurisdiction is the world. Their jurisdiction is New York City,” the governor said. “My concern is this kind of obsession that the NYPD seems to have that they’re the masters of the universe.”
U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) returned fire Friday on told WOR’s “The John Gambling Show.”
“I can’t believe Governor Christie is so narrow-minded that somehow he thinks terrorism is going to stop at the state line or the city line,” said King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “I wish Chris Christie were more concerned about keeping people alive than he is about trying to score cheap political points.”
Christie has said the NYPD’s surveillance in 2007 was “disturbing,” but he’s focused most of his verbal assaults on Kelly, who Christie mocked as “all-knowing, all-seeing” and who he criticized for keeping New Jersey in the dark.
King, who generally supports Christie, strongly defended Kelly.
“This isn’t some liberal teachers union that Chris Christie’s fighting with here,” King said. “This is Ray Kelly, who literally has the most effective counterterrorism force in the country protecting the people of New York and the people of New Jersey.”
The governor’s spokesman Michael Drewniak responded Saturday in an e-mail.
“Congressman King’s vitriol is over the top, getting a bit tired and misses the point. Governor Christie merely raised reasonable concerns about NYPD activities in New Jersey -- chiefly that NYPD ignored one of the main lessons learned after the 9/11 attacks: that professional law enforcement agencies need to share information and cooperate,” Drewniak wrote.
“That would include the NYPD communicating with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New Jersey. That’s a reasonable, bare minimum expectation for cooperation between law enforcement agencies and jurisdictions.”