LAPD Tracking Muslim Groups

The LAPD has started tracking the Muslim enclaves inside Los Angeles:

An extensive mapping program launched by the LAPD’s anti-terrorism
bureau to identify Muslim enclaves across the city sparked outrage
Thursday from some Islamic groups and civil libertarians, who denounced
the effort as an exercise in racial and religious profiling.

Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing, who
heads the bureau, defended the undertaking as a way to help Muslim
communities avoid the influence of those who would radicalize Islamic
residents and advocate “violent, ideologically-based extremism.”

“We are seeking to identify at-risk communities,” Downing said in an
interview Thursday evening. “We are looking for communities and
enclaves based on risk factors that are likely to become isolated. . .
. We want to know where the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chechens are so we
can reach out to those communities.”

Downing added that the Muslim Public Affairs Council has embraced
the vaguely defined program “in concept.” The group’s executive
director, Salam Al-Marayati, said Thursday that it wanted to know more
about the plan and had a meeting set with the LAPD next week.

“We will work with the LAPD and give them input, while at the same
time making sure that people’s civil liberties are protected,” said
Al-Marayati, who commended Downing for being “very forthright in his
engagement with the Muslim community.”

~~~

Hussam Ayloush, who leads the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, said the mapping “basically turns the LAPD
officers into religious political analysts, while their role is to
fight crime and enforce the laws.”

During Oct. 30 testimony before Congress, Downing described the program
broadly as an attempt to “mitigate radicalization.” At that time, he
said law enforcement agencies nationwide faced “a vicious, amorphous
and unfamiliar adversary on our land.”

Downing and other law enforcement officials said police agencies around
the world are dealing with radical Muslim groups that are isolated from
the larger community, making potential breeding groups for terrorism.
He cited terror cells in Europe as well as the case of some Muslim
extremists in New Jersey arrested in May for allegedly planning to bomb
Ft. Dix.

“We want to map the locations of these closed, vulnerable communities,
and in partnership with these communities . . . help [weave] these
enclaves into the fabric of the larger society,” he said in his
testimony.

“To do this, we need to go into the community and get to know peoples’
names,” he said. “We need to walk into homes, neighborhoods, mosques
and businesses.”

To assemble the mapping data, Downing said in an interview Thursday,
the LAPD intends to enlist USC’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis
of Terrorism Events, which was founded four years ago with $12 million
in federal funds.

In 2003, university officials said the center would focus on
threats to power plants, telecommunications and transportation systems.

It recently was tapped to strengthen security at Los Angeles International Airport.

Downing said the effort would not involve spying on neighborhoods. He said it would identify groups, not individuals.

“This has nothing to do with intelligence,” he said, comparing it to market research.

In this day and age you damn well better be tracking these groups.  While the majority of Muslims here probably do not want to harm this country it only takes a few radical Islamic elements to infiltrate a mosque, as this movie shows us is happening on a continual basis, to do a great amount of damage to this country.

UPDATE

ABCNews…”Exclusive: FBI: Al Qaeda May Strike U.S. Shopping Malls in LA, Chicago”

Link to FBI alert PDF