LOS ANGELES
A police plan to map out Muslim communities that was sharply criticized and called religious profiling by civil rights groups has been shelved, a police spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing announced last week that the LAPD’s counterterrorism bureau planed to identify Muslim enclaves to determine which might be likely to become isolated and susceptible to “violent, ideologically based extremism.”
“There was a clear message from the Muslim community that they were not comfortable with it. So we listened,” Mary Grady, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department, told The Associated Press.
Grady said the program hadn’t been dropped, but rather had been indefinitely postponed. She couldn’t immediately say when it might be resumed.
Grady said the remaining part of the initiative, which includes outreach efforts to strengthen ties with Muslim communities, would continue, and police planned to meet with Muslim leaders Thursday.
Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, praised the decision.
