A building superintendent at an
apartment complex just off the Rutgers University campus called the New
Brunswick Police 911 line in June 2009. He said his staff had been
conducting a routine inspection and came across something suspicious.
"What's suspicious?" the dispatcher asked.
"Suspicious in the sense that the
apartment has about — has no furniture except two beds, has no
clothing, has New York City Police Department radios."
"Really?" the dispatcher asked, her voice rising with surprise.
The caller, Salil Sheth, had
stumbled upon one of the NYPD's biggest secrets: a safe house, a place
where undercover officers working well outside the department's
jurisdiction could lie low and coordinate surveillance. Since the Sept.
11, 2001, terror attacks, the NYPD, with training and guidance from the
CIA, has monitored the activities of Muslims in New York and far beyond.
Detectives infiltrated mosques, eavesdropped in cafes and kept tabs on
Muslim student groups, including at Rutgers.
The NYPD kept files on innocent
sermons, recorded the names of political organizers in police documents
and built databases of where Muslims lived and shopped, even where they
were likely to gather to watch sports. Out-of-state operations, like the
one in New Brunswick, were one aspect of this larger
intelligence-gathering effort. The Associated Press previously described
the discovery of the NYPD inside the New Jersey apartment, but police
now have released the tape of the 911 call and other materials after a
legal fight.
"There's computer hardware,
software, you know, just laying around," the caller continued. "There's
pictures of terrorists. There's pictures of our neighboring building
that they have."
"In New Brunswick?" the dispatcher asked, sounding as confused as the caller.
The AP requested a copy of the
911 tape last year. Under pressure from the NYPD, the New Brunswick
Police Department refused. After the AP sued, the city this week turned
over the tape and emails that described the NYPD's efforts to keep the
recording a secret.
The call sent New Brunswick
police and the FBI rushing to the apartment complex. Officers and agents
were surprised at what they found. None had been told that the NYPD was
in town.
At the NYPD, the bungled
operation was an embarrassment. It made the department look amateurish
and forced it to ask the FBI to return the department's materials.
The emails highlight the
sometimes convoluted arguments the NYPD has used to justify its
out-of-state activities, which have been criticized by New Jersey Gov.
Chris Christie and some members of Congress. The NYPD has infiltrated
and photographed Muslim businesses and mosques in New Jersey, monitored
the Internet postings of Muslim college students across the Northeast
and traveled as far away as New Orleans to infiltrate and build files on
liberal advocacy groups.
In February, NYPD's deputy
commissioner for legal matters, Andrew Schaffer, told reporters that
detectives can operate outside New York because they aren't conducting
official police duties.
"They're not acting as police officers in other jurisdictions," Schaffer said.
In trying to keep the 911 tape
under wraps, however, the NYPD made no mention of the fact that its
officers were not acting as police. In fact, Lt. Cmdr. William McGroarty
and Assistant Chief Thomas Galati argued that releasing the recording
would jeopardize investigations and endanger the people and buildings.
Further, the apartment, No. 1076,
was rented by an undercover NYPD officer using a fake name that he was
still using, New Brunswick attorneys told the AP.
"Such identification will place
the safety of any officers identified, as well as the undercover
operatives with whom they work, at risk," Galati wrote in a letter to
New Brunswick.
The city deleted that name from the copy of the tape that it released.
Reached by phone Tuesday,
McGroarty declined to discuss the New Brunswick operation. But the
recording offers a glimpse inside the safe house: a small apartment with
two computers, dozens of black plastic boxes and no furniture or
clothes except one suit.
"And pictures of our neighboring buildings?" the dispatcher asked.
"Yes, the Matrix building," Sheth
replied, referring to a local developer. "There's pictures of
terrorists. There's literature on the Muslim religion."
New York authorities have
encouraged people like Sheth to call 911. In its "Eight Signs of
Terrorism," people are encouraged to call the police if they see
evidence of surveillance, information gathering, suspicious activities
or anything that looks out of place.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
has defended the police department's right to go anywhere in the country
in search of terrorists without telling local police. And New Jersey
Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa has said he's seen no evidence that the
NYPD's efforts violated his state's laws.
Muslim groups, however, have sued
to shut down the NYPD programs. Civil rights lawyers have asked a
federal judge to decide whether the spying violates federal rules that
were set up to prevent a repeat of NYPD abuses of the 1950s, when police
Red Squads spied on student groups and activists in search of
communists.
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