ACLU Civil Liberties LAPD

The LAPD Cans the Muslim Mapping Plan

muslim-and-us-flag.gif

LAPD’s head terrorism guy, Deputy Chief Mike Downing, is a smart and decent fellow. And most of his testimony before the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security’s and Governmental Affairs last month about the department’s strategy for outreach into Muslim communities was very nuanced and intelligent.

But it went off the rails when he got to the now-much publicized—and much criticized—part of the report that talked about mapping Muslim neighborhoods to asses for terrorist potential.


It is our hope to identify communities, within the larger Muslim community
, which may be susceptible to violent ideologically-based extremism and then use a full-spectrum approach guided by antintelligence-led strategy. Community mapping is the start of a conversation, not just data sets: It is law enforcement identifying with its community and the community identifying with its families, neighborhoods, city, state, country and police.


So what exactly does that mean? That the cops were going to find corners of the Muslim community
where people were…..what? Talking angrily?

And here’s how the LA Times reports it:


In a document reviewed by The Times last week,
the LAPD’s counter-terrorism bureau proposed using U.S. Census data and other demographic information to pinpoint various Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies.


Racial profiling, no matter how well intentioned,
is still racial profiling. It’s not the LAPD’s job to look for perceived pockets of homegrown terrorist potential. (Is it law enforcement’s job to look for crimes being planned or committed? Yes. But should they also look for people who might one day, if the right circumstances develop, start thinking about committing crimes…? That would be a no, folks.) Nor is it the cops’ job to become some kind of badge-wearing sociologist/social workers in order to keep that perceived potential from developing.


Yesterday when Downing was on Warren Olney’s
Which Way LA show , he wisely announced that the department was dumping the mapping plan because of the understandable upset it was causing in the Muslim community.

Chief Downing is meeting with members of the Muslim community about the issue today.

Kudos to the cops for having the willingness to
admit their misfire, and then to work with the various Muslim communities to find a solution that makes a bit more practical and cultural sense.

11 Comments

  • So, protecting the public once more gives way to political correctness.

    It was a number of years ago, but a description of a rapist had been given to the San Francisco police. He was black, so the police were questioning only black males. Guess what. There were cries of racial profiling because they weren’t checking out white men, too, so they stopped.

    You liberals are going to be the death of us all.

  • It wasn’t too long ago that I had a discussion with a state representative who works with Census data. I was trying to find out if a particular question I wanted to investigate could be answered by Census data – access to the data would have been a whole separate issue. As it turns out, the data wasn’t collected, ergo, the question I had couldn’t be answered that way. This representative related there were decisions made by government folks way, way back to purposefully not collect certain kinds of data because they couldn’t be sure the data wouldn’t be inappropriately used against American citizens and then, of course, WWII came along. At the time, my conversation with this individual seemed surreal. It was hard to imagine the data I sought could be used for nefarious purposes, against American citizens, by our own government. It’s a whole ‘nother world now. Recently, I have repeatedly thanked those long ago civil servants for being so farsighted.

  • Well I suppose they could now turn to purchases of falaffel ala the FBI as a way of finding Middle Eastern Terrorists.

    Woody go back to your rain dance, please! You and Purdue deserve each other!

  • The L A Times story on this says that Downing just let the word “mapping” slip, that it wasn’t part of the LAPD’s carefully scripted explanation, and that word is what set off the alarms. What a difference a word makes. If he’s just left it as community outreach etc., would have been different. And that really seems their intent.

    Of course, the notion that all the Muslims could be found in one place, and to announce it as “mapping,” sounded naive as well. Whenever a sleeper cell is busted up, they were always giving the appearance of being assimilated in a non-Muslim neighborhood. But after the fact, the neighbors always describe them as “polite, quiet types, who kept to themselves.” But they always belong to a mosque or prayer group, so keeping good relations with the Imams and elders, study groups etc. is more to the point.

    The NY Daily News reported busting a clothing ring operating in Bell/ Cudahy/ downtown’s fashion district, Operation Bell Bottoms, which was really a front for laundering funds and drugs sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon (via means like stuffing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cute teddy bears).

    Reported just last week, a joint op between local agencies and teh FBI. They mentioned six guys — I’d like to know, wasn’t anyone in the community suspicious of these guys? Did they attend a mosque or prayer group, and never said or did anything suspicious? Or did they, and that’s how they got busted — the details have been kept under wraps to protect the safety of the informants.

  • Woody, do you have a link for that SFPD story? It sounds like an urban legend to me, but I am prepared to be corrected.

    It’s unfortunate that this whole program was derailed by that slip of the tongue by Mr. Downing.

  • Nope, Kevin. It’s in my memory, and the left-wing press doesn’t cover or archive such matters. Maybe if I looked for a while I would find it, but I’m not going to take the time and you can decide whether or not to take my word for it.

    rlc, it doesn’t rain equally over the state and it may not have been a flood, but we got rain, and that’s what people were praying for. Were we supposed to specify the number of inches that we wanted? We’ll get more, though. If God is responding to prayer with His “sense of humor,” then the prayers must be reaching Him. He never fails.

  • “The L A Times story on this says that Downing just let the word “mapping” slip, that it wasn’t part of the LAPD’s carefully scripted explanation, and that word is what set off the alarms.”

    Piffle. This simply ain’t true. I’ve got a copy of the printed text of Downing’s testimony. (I can’t seem to find it archived online or I’d link to it. I just have it as a PDF.)

    I don’t mean a transcript. I mean the point by point document that he was working from when he gave his testimony, and “mapping” is featured prominently in the thing. Yet, the term was “community mapping”—not, obviously, “Muslim mapping.” Yet the only community up for discussion was the Muslim community, so……a rose by any other name, and all that.

  • The Daily News’ Opinion piece today says that Downing “casually dropped the word ‘mapping,'” during his presentation and that started the brouhaha, whereas, they feel, if he’s just stuck to “community outreach” the same plan would have been accepted. In fact, DN opines the plan could have been turned into a positive attempt to connect to the Muslim community. It’s all about “messaging.” But you say that “mapping” was scripted for him, does it say by whom? Not very bright P R people, if that’s the case. Knowing Bratton and some people he works with, I’m sure they intended it to be reflective of the “new” and “responsive” face of LAPD. Too bad it backfired on them. Choice of words and messaging really can turn things 180.

  • This is a problem with a simple solution.

    The cops should get out their cars and walk or bike-ride around the neighborhood they are supposed to patrol. This has been called many things in the past, such as “community policing”, “walking the beat”. If you want to know any area, you need to get out of your car and talk to people. Most L.A. area cops just drive around and don’t really get to know the people and area they are supposed to serve.

Leave a Comment