NYPD surveillance blown by university apartment superintendent
A tape has emerged of the moment an apartment superintendent inadvertently walked into one of the New York Police Department’s supposedly top secret antiterrorist safe houses, heaping embarrassment on the force.
During a routine inspection, Salil Sheth came across a sparsely furnished apartment containing pictures of terrorists, photographs of local landmarks and Muslim literature, the building supervisor called police, thinking he had stumbled upon an al-Qaeda terror plot.
What he actually discovered was far less threatening but much more embarrassing – for the NYPD.
For Mr Sheth, who manages an apartment complex in New Brunswick, New Jersey, had inadvertently walked into a base for undercover officers investigating a terror cell.
The telephone call, in which Mr Sheth reported the discovery to New Brunswick police, has only just been released after The Associated Press news agency mounted a year-long battle with the NYPD.
In it he tells police he has found “suspicious activity” in an apartment unit in his building.
“What’s suspicious?” the operator asks.
“Suspicious in the sense that the apartment has about – has no furniture except two beds, has no clothing, has New York City Police Department radios,” Mr Sheth said.
“There’s computer hardware, software, you know, just laying around. There’s pictures of terrorists. There’s pictures of our neighbouring building that they have.”
The female operator handling the call sounds just as confused and surprised as Mr Sheth.
“Really,” she asks. “And pictures of your neighbouring buildings?”
“Yes, the Matrix building,” Mr Sheth replied, referring to a local developer. “There’s pictures of terrorists. There’s literature on the Muslim religion.”
“In New Brunswick?” the dispatcher asks, perhaps confused as to what NYPD radios are doing outside of the force’s jurisdiction.
Since September 11 2001, NYPD officers investigating terrorists have been conducting operations outside the city limits, monitoring the activities of potential terror groups.
Mr Sheth tells the operator that he notified all residents in his building two weeks prior to his call that the inspections would be taking place.
He said that when they arrived at the apartment in question – number 1076 – the notice was still pinned to the front door, suggesting that no police officers had been there in recent weeks.
By now the dispatcher may have perhaps realised that Mr Sheth had stumbled upon a top secret police location. Her next instruction was: “Whoever is in the apartment just tell them to get out and I will speak to my supervisor.”
Nonetheless the call prompted New Brunswick Police and the FBI to go to the apartment.
Unaware that the NYPD was in town conducting an undercover operation, the FBI seized all of the material inside, creating the embarrassing situation of the NYPD having to request that the FBI hands back its property.
The force then attempted to save their blushes by asking the New Brunswick Police Department not to release the 911 tape to the Associated Press, a request it initially agreed to. The release of such tapes is fairly standard in the US.
The tape comes on the back of a series of stories suggesting that NYPD terror surveillance operations are infringing the civil liberties of Muslims and highlights the fact that the NYPD will travel beyond their jurisdiction to mount such investigations, something the force has been criticised for previously.
Earlier this year Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor and potential vice presidential candidate, reacted angrily at learning the NYPD was conducting surveillance operations on Muslims in Newark,
SOURCE: The Telegraph
