Informant: NYPD paid me to 'bait' Muslims
Source: Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.
Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.
"We need you to pretend to be one of them," Rahman recalled the police telling him. "It's street theater."
Rahman said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was "detrimental to the Constitution." After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police - and after he told the police that he had been contacted by the AP - he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, "Steve," and his handler's NYPD phone number was disconnected.
Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NYPD_INTELLIGENCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-10-23-17-19-20
Ash_F
(5,861 posts)One of these "baiting" operatives was told he was no longer welcome at a mosque because of his violent rhetoric(mosque did not know he was undercover). LEO's should maybe step off the gas a little bit. It's getting a little crazy.
sakabatou
(42,148 posts)Tigress DEM
(7,887 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)Chakab
(1,727 posts)Between this and the stop and frisk bullshit, I'm really glad that I don't live in the city anymore.
Judi Lynn
(160,516 posts)Hope they won't choose to harm him.
The man is courageous, and he's done the public a service by speaking the truth regardless.