Two interesting stories out of NYC today:
- 47 people were shot over this crazy holiday weekend, including three people killed and two cops wounded in a shooting near the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn. The parade often sees violence and also had fatal shootings in 2003 and 2005, but according to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly the city should not consider shutting it down -- "It's our biggest parade," he said, and because of the density of people, "you can't watch everything."
- Details are emerging about an NYPD spying operation that used federal money and an unusually close relationship with the CIA to put huge numbers of innocent people under scrutiny. More than 250 mosques and Muslim student groups in and around New York were spied upon by a secret squad known as the "Demographics Unit". Its targets included those from "ancestries of interest", including "American Black Muslim." (Which you and I know is a religion, not an ancestry, but apparently that's too complicated for the NYPD.) Several Muslim civil rights groups and a New York congresswoman have urged the Justice Department to investigate the NYPD for racial profiling.
So, the NYPD's response to real shootings -- "you can't watch everything." Its response to the "threat" of Muslims praying and talking about politics: "get me the CIA, let's get some federal money and form a spy unit!"
Does anyone else see a problem here?