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Since late August, 34 members of Congress, Muslim civil rights groups and most recently Ivy League universities and New Jersey officials have asked the Justice Department to investigate the NYPD's intelligence division. The Obama administration has pointedly refused to endorse or repudiate the NYPD programs, which the AP reported Monday are at least partly funded under a White House federal grant intended to help law enforcement fight drug crimes. "Our examination of this has been limited at least at this point to the letters that have come in," Holder said. "We're only beginning our review. I don't know if federal funds were used." Holder said there were 17 or 18 Justice Department investigations about how police around the country interact with citizens. "I'm not saying that will be something we would do here, but if we think that there's a basis for it, we will do that," Holder said. Federal investigations into police departments typically focus on police abuse or racial profiling in arrests. Since 9/11, the Justice Department has never publicly investigated a police department for its surveillance in national security investigations. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday invoked the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center and the successful attacks in 2001 that destroyed it, in a renewed defense of the NYPD. "We said back then we are not going to forget this time around," he said. "We will not. We are not going to forget." He added, "To let our guard down would just be an outrage." Bloomberg said criticism of the police department actions was "just misplaced" and "pandering." Universities including Yale, Columbia and Rutgers have joined in criticizing the NYPD for infiltrating Muslim student groups and trawling their websites. Police put the names of students and academics in reports even when they were not suspected of wrongdoing. And in Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker said he was offended by the NYPD's secret surveillance of his city's Muslims. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the president of Rutgers University in New Jersey have urged the state attorney general to investigate the NYPD's surveillance activities. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. has also urged Holder to look into the NYPD's operations outside New York.
[Associated
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