NJ Muslim leaders meet with officials to discuss response to NYPD surveillance program

TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey’s attorney general told Muslim leaders Saturday that he was still looking into the extent of New York Police Department surveillance operations in the state, yet stopped short of promising a formal investigation during a meeting that both sides characterized as productive.

Leaders from different New Jersey Muslim organizations met with Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa and state and federal law enforcement officials for nearly three hours in Trenton to discuss concerns over the NYPD’s activities in the state.

A spokesman for the attorney general, Paul Loriquet, called Saturday’s meeting the start of an ongoing dialogue with New Jersey’s Muslim American community.

“We will continue to reach out to the community and keep the communication channels open as we move forward in our fact-finding,” he said.

New Jersey’s Muslim leaders have been demanding at least a state investigation — if not a federal one — into the NYPD’s activities following a series of stories by The Associated Press that detailed the monitoring or recommended surveillance of Muslims in New Jersey, the mapping of mosques in Newark and the monitoring of Muslim student groups, including at Rutgers University and at other schools in the Northeast.

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