© Andrew Burton / Reuters
An independent police monitor found the New York Police Department violated surveillance laws, particularly when spying on Muslim groups. The report found NYPD's intelligence division often continued surveillance after court permission for it expired.
As far back as 2004, the NYPD failed to get permission to continue investigations of Muslims groups, the New York Inspector General said. For its investigation, the IG used a sample of all cases closed between 2010 and 2015, some of which go back to 2004.
In 25 percent of the cases, surveillance investigations continue for more than a month past the when the bureau should have obtained renewed authorization.
The
report, released on Tuesday, found that more than 95 percent of the people under investigation in the cases were "associated with Muslims and/or engaged in political activity that those individuals associated with Islam."
The findings were "more evidence that t
he NYPD's surveillance of American Muslims was highly irregular, operated in a black box and violated even the weaker rules that existed before our proposed settlement," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union,
told AP.
The report comes eight months after the city agreed to settle two federal lawsuits with Islamic groups which argued the NYPD routinely violated their civil rights by conducting unwarranted surveillance of Muslims. As part of the settlement Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to a committee with some civilian oversight of the NYPD's Intelligence Bureau.
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