Christie slams NYPD surveillance in Jersey

The NYPD is facing mounting criticism of its secret surveillance of Muslims across the Northeast, with ACLU chapters and several other groups demanding an investigation and New Jersey's governor accusing the city police of arrogantly acting as if "their jurisdiction is the world."

The intelligence-gathering was detailed recently in a series of stories by The Associated Press, which reported that New York City police monitored mosques and Muslims around the metropolitan area and kept tabs on Muslim student groups at universities in upstate New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The department also sent an undercover agent on a white-water rafting trip with college students.

The tactics have stirred debate over whether the NYPD is trampling on the civil rights of Muslims and illegally engaging in religious and ethnic profiling.

"They should be spending their time looking at the more specific behaviors that ought to draw their attention and make them investigate a person or a group. But simply gathering to pray or going on a white-water rafting trip really shouldn't be a source of suspicion," Mary Catherine Roper, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said Thursday.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has argued that the NYPD's actions are legal and necessary in a city under constant threat of another terrorist attack like 9/11 and that police have the right to travel beyond the city limits to do their job.

His office had no comment on the latest criticism, and the NYPD didn't respond to a request for comment.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie Thursday accused the department of ignoring a key lesson of Sept. 11 by not sharing information with New Jersey law enforcement agencies when it conducted surveillance in Newark, Christie was U.S. attorney for New Jersey in 2007 when the intelligence-gathering occurred, and he said he doesn't recall being briefed.

"9/11 was not prevented because law enforcement agencies weren't talking to each other, they were being selfish, they were being provincial, they were being paranoid, they were being arrogant," Christie said. "I do not want to return to those days."

He said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly wouldn't want to have to explain himself if something went wrong because of a lack of coordination.