LAPD scraps plan to "map" Muslim communities

As ACLU of So Cal reported earlier in last week, the LAPD had planned to 'map' Muslim communitites in the Los Angeles area. Seems that the LAPD have caved to pressure come to their senses and have scrapped the whole plan.

As reported in this morning's LA Times, the LAPD, under heavy fire from many groups, has decided their brilliant idea of monitoring the entire Muslim population of Los Angeles wasn't such a great move after all.

The LAPD on Wednesday abruptly scrapped a program to map the city's Muslim population, a major retreat for a department that said the system was needed to identify potential hotbeds of extremism.

With a little help from those who expressed that the maneuver was wrong prima facie, it would appear that someone in the realized that targeting a group because of their religious beliefs was not proper conduct.

Or did they?

The reversal comes after a week of protests from Muslim groups and civil libertarians, who equated the mapping with religious profiling. Others questioned whether it was possible for the LAPD to accurately map the city's far-flung Muslim community.

So, apparently some people didn't think religious profiling was wrong, just that it wasn't practical. How terribly noble of them; nothing like a sudden realization of unconstitutional action crisis of conscious to shape your actions.

I think though that one can infer that this isn't what happened. Someone at the USC's National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, who were to help the department, leaked the info the the press as they knew damn well that what was going to be conducted was plainly wrong. I mean, would law enforcement normally go public with an ostensible sting operation, especially if it was to do with the mission of our generation? I don't think so. I magine the LAPD releasing this analogous memo:

LAPD monitoring club suspected of mob ties; two officers down the street in a van who haven't showered in three days

No, the LAPD got busted and are now covering their asses so as not to look like the racist organization it has been for years. What is sad is it obviously took someone without the department to leak their incendiary plan. Good thing there are still people around to keep some checks on power.