'Mapping' A Danger

IBD ^ | November 12, 2007

[Kaslin]

Homeland Security: Los Angeles police want to map potential terror hotbeds in the Muslim community, but critics are crying "religious profiling." Actually, it's just smart law enforcement.

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And it couldn't come at a better time. The FBI is warning police in Los Angeles, as well as Chicago, that shopping malls there are possible targets of a new al-Qaida plot.

By mapping the local Muslim community, the LAPD would increase its chances of disrupting such plots. Its counterterrorism unit hopes to ID areas that might be more isolated and removed — and therefore riper targets for radicalization and even al-Qaida recruitment.

Shining a spotlight on these neighborhoods would take the terrorists and their facilitators out of the shadows where they prefer to operate.

"We just don't know enough about the communities," explains deputy LAPD chief Michael Downing, adding that the planned mapping project "has nothing to do with profiling."

But predictably, the ACLU has joined CAIR and other Muslim groups in denouncing the move.

"The mapping of Muslim communities seems premised on the faulty notion that Muslims are more likely to commit violent acts than people of other faiths," the ACLU complained.

[Riverine]

“The mapping of Muslim communities seems premised on the faulty notion that Muslims are more likely to commit violent acts than people of other faiths,” the ACLU complained.

So much I could say, so little time.