The New York Police Department is defending itself in a federal civil rights lawsuit over its surveillance of Muslims. It says in a new court filing that nothing it has done violated surveillance guidelines imposed by a federal judge in a previous case.
In the legal papers, a detective told the judge that he never asked an informant to get Muslims to make incriminating comments. But text messages obtained by The Associated Press show that the detective never told the informant to stop, either.
The detective describes the informant's activities as narrowly focused on a few people under investigation, but text messages obtained by the AP show a wide-ranging effort. The NYPD says the informant was either lying or didn't know what he was talking about.
