By Daniel B. Wood – staff writer and Alison Tully Contributor
A high-profile police plan to map Los Angeles’s Muslim population to pinpoint possible terror risks – a plan abruptly withdrawn last week – is an object lesson for US law enforcement in the era after 9/11, say policing experts.
Los Angeles, a bastion of ethnic diversity, has been a pioneer in community policing. And even though the plan to map Muslim areas is viewed as a public relations blunder, the swift response to scrap it is evidence that American police tactics are changing for the better, if only slowly, analysts say.
“This shows how deep a challenge it is for police leaders who are trying to balance the concerns of citizens about national security and the issue of terrorism,” says Hubert Williams, president of the Police Foundation in Washington. “Twenty years ago, you would have more likely seen a police department that would bully straight ahead with this over these heated objections.”
The Los Angeles Police Department’s counterterrorism bureau proposed using US census data and other demographic information to pinpoint various Muslim communities that are likely to become isolated and vulnerable to “violent, ideologically based extremism,” Deputy Chief Michael Downing reportedly said recently. The LAPD had planned to partner with the University of Southern California’s National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events to assess possible terror risks.
After widespread criticism by both Muslim and other religious leaders, the LAPD scrapped the plan Nov. 15.
The Islamic Workplace 
November 21st, 2007 → 2:46 pm
[…] disassociated.com – dissecting the {SubSet} culture since 1997 wrote an interesting post today!.Here’s a quick excerptWhy L.A. police cancelled a plan to map Muslims By Daniel B. Wood – staff writer and Alison Tully Contributor A high-profile police plan to map Los Angeles’s Muslim population to pinpoint possible terror risks – a plan abruptly withdrawn last week – is an object lesson for US law enforcement in the era after 9/11, say policing experts. Los Angeles, a bastion of ethnic diversity, has been a pioneer in community policing. And even though the plan to map Muslim areas is viewed as a public relat […]