Even New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been solicitous beyond belief to the Muslims in New York, defends the New York program, and maintains that no one’s Constitutional rights were violated. The New York program kept under surveillance some members of the Muslim Students Association, which is a Muslim Brotherhood group. So McCarthy is essentially promising that he will leave Chicagoans unprotected against jihad.
“Chicago chief: No blanket surveillance of Muslims,” by Hugh Dellios for Associated Press, March 5 (thanks to all who sent this in):
CHICAGO “” For the first time in public, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy promised his department will never conduct blanket surveillance of Muslims like the New York Police Department did in Newark, N.J., when he was chief there.
McCarthy addressed hundreds of Muslims on Saturday at the annual banquet of the Council on American-Muslim Relations-Chicago, a civil rights organization. He said police would follow leads in criminal cases, but the department “does not and will not conduct blanket surveillance and profiling of any community in the city of Chicago.”
Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emanuel during a news conference Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012, in Chicago. Emanuel says Chicago would not conduct activities like the NYPD operation that spied on Muslims in Newark, N.J., when Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy was chief there. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
“We are deeply committed to respecting the civil rights of all Chicagoans,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy and Mayor Rahm Emanuel have tried to reassure Chicago-area Muslims since The Associated Press revealed the NYPD’s spying in Newark.
In a sane world, after all the jihad plots in the U.S. recently, Muslims would be trying to reassure them.
The AP reported last month that in 2007, the NYPD’s secretive Demographics Unit fanned out across Newark, photographing mosques and eavesdropping on Muslim businesses. Earlier, the AP reported that the department was conducting similar surveillance in New York, building databases showing where Muslims live, shop and pray.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has vigorously defended the operations, saying police only follow up on allegations. But civil rights advocates and other critics say the NYPD’s 60-page report on the Newark operations showed Muslims were targeted for no other reason than they were Muslims, not because they were suspected of crimes….
McCarthy wrapped up his remarks by saying he is a 9/11 survivor, who was in a command post near the World Trade Center until the towers fell. He told the audience that 13 of the 23 officers lost by the NYPD were personal friends.
“And I want to tell you this,” he said. “In the 10-plus years since that horrific event, which has affected me to my core, I have never once thought ill of the religion of Islam.”
“I am well programmed! War is peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength! Please don’t hurt me or charge me with racism!”