The FINANCIAL — Hundreds of Muslims prayed in a lower Manhattan park and marched to New York Police headquarters on Friday to protest a decade of police infiltrating mosques and spying on Muslim neighbourhoods.
Bundled in winter clothes, men and women knelt as the call to prayer echoed off the cold stone of government buildings.
The demonstration was smaller and more subdued than the Occupy Wall Street protests that led to clashes with police and made headlines worldwide. Police wore windbreakers, not riot gear, and protesters called for improved relations with police.It was the first organised opposition to the NYPD's intelligence tactics since an AP investigation revealed widespread spying programmes that documented every aspect of Muslim life in New York. Police infiltrated mosques and student groups.
Plainclothes officers catalogued Middle Eastern restaurants and their clientele. Analysts built databases on Arab cab drivers and monitored Muslims who changed their names.Following the prayer service, the Muslims — joined by about 50 Occupy Wall Street demonstrators — crowded the pavement for the short walk to the large police headquarters building known as One Police Plaza.
They stayed only briefly, chanting for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's ouster, before returning to Foley Square.Protesters carried signs that said "NYPD Watches Us. Who Watches NYPD?" A dozen or so uniformed police officers monitored the demonstration and followed the march, but there were no clashes between protesters and police.
At an unrelated news conference on Friday, Kelly told reporters that he "categorically" denied the idea that the NYPD was spying.
Kelly and his intelligence chief, David Cohen, have transformed the NYPD into one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. It operates far outside the city borders, and its manpower and budget give it capabilities that even the federal government does not have.
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