Ground Report

The Los Angeles Police Department is considering a plan to map all Muslims in the area. Critics say a police counter-terror effort to identify and map Muslim communities amounts to religious and racial profiling — investigating residents based on what they look like, or where they worship. But city officials defended the effort on Friday, depicting it as "community engagement" aimed at welcoming sometimes insular Muslim groups into all aspects of city life. It is about transparency, not clandestine surveillance, they said. Police respect "the civil and human rights of Muslims," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. Deputy Chief Michael P Downing said objections are coming from people who "don’t really understand what we are doing." "We are not looking at individuals. We are looking at groups and communities," the chief said. Police want to be viewed as "trusted friends." An estimated 500,000 Mulims live in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside Counties. The Police Department is trying to identify the location of Muslim enclaves to determine which might be susceptible to "violent, ideologically-based extremism," Downing said on Thursday. Several Muslim groups, lawyers and Civil Rights groups have sent representations to Downing expressing their grave concerns for the new proposal by LAPD