A lawsuit filed against the NYPD accuses the city’s police of regularly violating the civil rights of Muslims. The suit claims that the NYPD unconstitutionally profiles and intimidates them, thereby discouraging them from practicing their religion. Civil rights lawyers filed the lawsuit in a federal Manhattan court on Tuesday. Shortly thereafter, supporters of the suit formed a rally outside of the New York Police Department’s headquarters to reinforce their complaints. “Our mosque should be an open, religious, spiritual sanctuary, but NYPD spying has turned it into a place of suspicion and censorship,” Hamid Hassan Raza, an imam named as a plaintiff in the case, said at the rally. The lawsuit was filed by civil rights lawyers on behalf of numerous religious and community leaders, mosques, and a charitable organization that were victims of the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers. The lawsuit requests the court to declare such spy initiatives unconstitutional and order the destruction of records related to the program.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:54:49 +0000