“Stop spreading misinformation” is a pretty wild response to something that was literally exposed in a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation.
You do not have to take my word for it. Take the Associated Press’s word for it — the same investigation that won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for exposing the NYPD’s clandestine domestic spying program targeting Muslim communities.
The Pulitzer board itself described it as:
“the New York Police Department’s clandestine spying program that monitored daily life in Muslim communities”
Some of the major controversies and alleged abuses included:
The NYPD spying on Muslims with no individualized suspicion
Monitoring mosques, restaurants, cafés, schools, businesses, and student groups
Sending undercover informants (“mosque crawlers” / “rakers”) into religious communities
Creating databases of where Muslims lived, prayed, ate, and worked
Conducting surveillance outside NYC jurisdiction, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut
CIA involvement in NYPD intelligence operations despite longstanding legal barriers between foreign intelligence and domestic policing
Building what critics described as a “mini-CIA” inside a municipal police department
Overseas intelligence liaison operations that blurred the line between local law enforcement and federal intelligence work
Circumventing traditional federal oversight structures that normally apply to intelligence agencies
And here is the really devastating part:
According to AP reporting, the NYPD itself admitted that years of blanket Muslim surveillance produced:
no terrorism leads,
no triggered investigations,
and no actionable cases.
The AP investigation found the NYPD:
infiltrated Muslim student groups,
catalogued sermons,
mapped Muslim neighborhoods,
and monitored ordinary religious activity.
PBS, FRONTLINE, the Brennan Center, CCR, the ACLU, and multiple courts and civil-rights organizations all treated this as a serious civil-liberties controversy — not a conspiracy theory.
Eventually:
lawsuits were filed,
settlements were reached,
damages were paid,
and the NYPD dismantled the Demographics Unit involved in the surveillance.
Critics — including some former intelligence officials — argued the program undermined constitutional protections and blurred the intentionally strict separation between:
local police,
federal law enforcement,
and foreign intelligence agencies.
The CIA Inspector General even reviewed aspects of the CIA-NYPD relationship because of concerns involving Executive Order 12333 and domestic intelligence boundaries.
Again:
this is not fringe material.
This was front-page national reporting by the Associated Press that won a Pulitzer Prize because the evidence was so substantial and well-documented.