NYPD trainees shown anti-Muslim film: report

Police documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Law reveal the film was shown up to a year of training.

A propaganda film, depicting Muslims as terrorists who want to invade America, was shown to the New York Police Department during training, American newspaper The New York Times has reported.

The feature-length film, titled The Third Jihad, shows militants shooting Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph of an Islamic flag flying over the White House.

In January 2011, when news broke that the department had used the film in training, a top police official denied it, then said it had been mistakenly screened “a couple of times” for a few officers.

A year later, police documents obtained under the state’s Freedom of Information Law reveal a different reality: the film was shown, according to internal police reports, “on a continuous loop” for between three months and one year of training. During that time, at least 1,489 police officers, from lieutenants to detectives to patrol officers, saw the film.

News that police trainers showed this film so extensively comes as the department wrestles with its relationship with the city’s large Muslim community. Members of the City Council, civil rights advocates and Muslim leaders say the department, in its zeal, has trampled on civil rights, blurred lines between foreign and domestic spying and sown fear among Muslims.

“The department’s response was to deny it and to fight our request for information,” said Faiza Patel, a director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which obtained the release of the documents through a Freedom of Information request. “The police have shown an explosive documentary to its officers and simply stonewalled us.”

Tom Robbins, a former columnist with The Village Voice, first revealed that the police had screened the film. The Brennan Center then filed its request.

The 72-minute film was financed by the Clarion Fund, a non-profit group whose board includes a former Central Intelligence Agency official and a deputy defence secretary for former US president Ronald Reagan. Its previous documentary attacking Muslims’ “war on the West” attracted support from the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has helped reshape the Republican presidential primary by pouring millions of dollars to support Newt Gingrich.