Post-Paris attacks, New York City reaches out to Muslims

hate crimes, the number of which “despite terror- filled headlines and the inflammatory rhetoric of some national politicians” is lower in New York this year.

Mayor Bill de Blasio yesterday delivered a speech at an Islamic community centre reaffirming that the city’s 800 000 Muslims have the same rights as all New Yorkers while pledging protection from any hate crimes.

De Blasio’s speech at the Jamaica Muslim Centre, or Masjid Al-Mamoor in Queens, is the most high-profile move the administration has made to calm jittery Muslims since the November 13 attacks that killed at least 129 people in Paris and this week’s slaying of 14 people in San Bernardino, California. But it’s not the only step the administration has taken to reach out to Muslims, some of whom feared discrimination after the Twin Tower attacks.

Six days after the Paris attacks, the mayor’s community affairs unit set up a meeting between 40 community leaders, mostly Muslims, and the NYPD’s hate crimes unit in a bid to build the trust needed for Muslims to turn to law enforcement for help.

Teams from the mayor’s office and city council hoped to improve relations with imams who could also advocate city services such as free child care and municipal ID cards that would improve some Muslims’ level of civic engagement and potentially ward off alienation.

“This is a community that has not always had the best relationship with the city government,” said Marco Carrion, head of the community affairs unit. “Some have never seen a helpful government and welcomed us with open arms. But other times we face real resistance and mistrust.”

Police said there has not been an increase in bias crimes against Muslims since the Paris attacks. So far this year, there have been 14 hate crimes against Muslims, a 39 percent decrease from this time a year ago, according to police statistics. But it is known some hate crimes go unreported.

The NYPD has 900 Muslim officers. Police staff street festi- vals, provide services to accident victims and try “to make people who don’t normally talk to cops feel comfortable coming to us,” said the head of the unit, Chief Joanne Jaffe.

After the Paris attacks, the NYPD increased security at mosques as well as synagogues and reached out to more than 40 Muslim organisations. On Monday, Police Commissioner William Bratton will host a conference for clergy members focusing on community involvement and the NYPD’s counterterrorism threat assessment programme.

“Outreach to the Muslim community is critically important, especially now,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

“But there must be clear distinctions between the outreach and anti- terrorism efforts. Otherwise, it will discourage Muslims from going to law enforcement and just breed further distrust.”

After September 11, the NYPD used its intelligence division to detect terror threats by cultivating informants and conducting surveillance in Muslim communities.

Over the years, the practice resulted in a handful of prosecutions of homegrown terrorists and, more recently, became the subject of a series of articles by the Associated Press revealing that the intelligence division had infiltrated dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups and investigated hundreds.

Last year, amid complaints of religious and racial profiling, the NYPD disbanded a team of detectives assigned to create databases but has continued its use of informants and undercover investigators to fight terror. – ANA-AP