Prominent Democrats Are Now Comfortable With Racial and Ethnic Profiling

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/prominent-democrats-are-now-comfortable-with-racial-and-ethnic-profiling/277900/

President Obama and Senator Schumer both say the NYPD's Ray Kelly would make a good Department of Homeland Security chief.


On Wednesday, President Obama assured a reporter that Ray Kelly, New York City's police commissioner, would make a fine leader for the Department of Homeland Security. "Well, Ray Kelly has obviously done an extraordinary job in New York and the federal government partners a lot with New York, because obviously our concerns about terrorism oftentimes are focused on big city targets," he said. "And I think Ray Kelly is one of the best there is. So he's been an outstanding leader in New York. We've had an outstanding leader in Janet Napolitano at the Department of Homeland Security. It's a tough job. It's one of the toughest jobs in Washington. She's done an extraordinary job. We're sorry to see her go. But you know, we're going to have a bunch of strong candidates. Mr. Kelly might be very happy where he is. But if he's not I'd want to know about it. 'Cause you know, obviously he'd be very well qualified for the job."

Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has been lobbying on the NYPD commissioner's behalf. "Ray Kelly has extensive experience with anti-terrorism, with homeland security and he's run a very large organization, the NYPD, extremely well for over a decade," he said in a video release. "And so Ray Kelly would be a great choice for Secretary of Homeland Security." And John Avlon, the centrist political director for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, argued that Kelly should be appointed, and ought to have gotten this DHS job last time around.

This is extremely worrisome -- especially if you're a Muslim American.

Under Ray Kelly, the NYPD infiltrated Muslim communities and spied on hundreds or perhaps thousands of totally innocent Americans at mosques, colleges, and elsewhere. Officers "put American citizens under surveillance and scrutinized where they ate, prayed and worked, not because of charges of wrongdoing but because of their ethnicity," AP reported, citing NYPD documents. Informants were paid to bait Muslims into making inflammatory statements. The NYPD even conducted surveillance on Muslim Americans outside its jurisdiction, drawing a rebuke from an FBI field office, where a top official charged that "the department's surveillance of Muslims in the state has hindered investigations and created 'additional risks' in counterterrorism."