“Muslim leader: Top Chicago cop vows no spying: @ Chicago Tribune

Posted on February 28, 2012

Don Babwin — February 28, 2012: “CHICAGO— Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy vowed at a meeting with a local Muslim leader Tuesday to confine his department’s surveillance activities to those that pursue “criminal leads,” and to avoid the type of widespread spying allegedly carried out by New York police.

The meeting, which was also attended by an area Jewish leader and an immigrants rights group official, followed an Associated Press report last week that showed the New York Police Department spied on Muslim neighborhoods in Newark when McCarthy led that city’s police department. Ahmed Rehab, who heads the local office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, requested the meeting over concerns such an operation could happen in Chicago.

“We wanted assurances that, first, this would not happen in Chicago and, second, the he’s opposed to … community profiling and we got both,” said Rehab.

The AP reported last week that in 2007, the NYPD‘s secretive Demographics Unit fanned out across Newark, photographing mosques and eavesdropping on Muslim businesses. Earlier, the AP reported that the department was conducting similar surveillance in New York, building databases showing where Muslims live, shop and pray……”

Read more at Chicago Tribune.