NYPD Shuts Down Controversial Muslim Surveillance Unit

After a long controversy, the New York Police Department has dropped its Muslim surveillance project. The squad, known as the “Demographics Unit” and now renamed the “Zone Assessment Unit,” used plainclothes detectives to spy on the conversations and day-to-day activities of New York’s Muslim neighborhoods.

The effort went as far as logging the conversations Muslims had in restaurants, as well as tracking the places they lived, worked, traveled, and prayed. Anyone in traditional Muslim clothes was a potential target.

The decade-long surveillance program never generated a single terrorism lead, the police acknowledged in 2012.