NEW YORK, Nov 16: Muslim civil rights groups have succeeded in persuading the Los Angeles Police Department to scrap its controversial plan to create a map detailing the Muslim communities in the sprawling metropolitan area, the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday.
Muslims advocacy groups and others had charged that the project was a thinly disguised form of racial profiling.
“We put it out there, it was rejected, it’s dead on arrival,” the police chief, William J. Bratton said at a news conference after a meeting with Muslim residents and civil rights organisations who had criticised the plan. “It will not be going forward.”
Various advocates for Muslims, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union expressed elation that the plan, first proposed as a means of tracking possible radicalisation, had been shelved.
“When they talk about mapping in law enforcement, they talk about mapping gang areas, mapping high-crime areas,” said Salam Al-Marayati, the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, based in Los Angeles, which had initially considered acting as the Police Department’s partner in the plan.
“Extending mapping of a criminal nature to a mainstream community, that was offensive to Muslim Americans, they felt like they were all being treated as suspects,” Mr Marayati told L.A. Times.
Police chief Bratton expressed regret that the plan might have added to any suspicions about the police harboured by Muslims, the newspaper said.
