LOS ANGELES (Agencies)
Los Angeles police have abandoned a controversial plan to "map" Los Angeles' Muslim community using a computer database as part of their efforts to counter terrorism.
Los Angeles Police Department chief William Bratton said the plan was scrapped after outrage from Muslims and civil rights organizations who had described it as "just as unlawful, ill-advised and deeply offensive as racial profiling."
"It's actually been scrapped," Bratton told KTLA television in an interview Thursday. "The Muslim community has made it quite clear over the past week ... that they really felt that it was inappropriate."
Officials with the Los Angeles police department said they had planned to launch the mapping effort to better understand the Muslim community, rather than as a form of profiling or targeting those who practice Islam.
But after the program met widespread opposition, including from Muslim interest groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and other rights organizations, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced that the plan had been scrapped.
"While I believe the department's efforts to reach out to the
Muslim communities were well-intentioned, the mapping proposal has created a level of fear and apprehension that made it counterproductive," the LA mayor was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as having told media.
According to news reports, the LAPD's counter-terrorism bureau planned to create the database using U.S. census data and other demographic information to pinpoint Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies.
LA police said they would drop the mapping aspect of the plan but continue efforts to reach out to the Muslim community, in hopes of identifying potential hotbeds of extremism, according to press reports.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was among the groups which slammed program proposed by LAPD as biased and inflammatory.
"People are concerned on the purposes this will be used for," said Sharif Mourassay of CAIR in a recent statement.
"This mapping project says that Muslims are more prone to violence than any other faith," he said.
About one-half million Muslims are said to live in the Los Angeles area, making it the second largest concentration Muslims after New York, according to the Times. |
