The sensationalist headline has been making the rounds this morning but this is some bad reporting from AP, bordering as dishonest.

Police hoped the Demographics Unit would serve as an early warning system for terrorism.

That’s not true. It would not be legal for the police to use the demographics unit as a blanket surveillance tool/fishing expedition to initiate investigations against Muslims. That would be Unconstitutional. The very next sentence tells you what the program is actully used for.

And if police ever got a tip about, say, an Afghan terrorist in the city, they’d know where he was likely to rent a room, buy groceries and watch sports.

But in a June 28 deposition as part of a longstanding federal civil rights case, Assistant Chief Thomas Galati said none of the conversations the officers overheard ever led to a case.
“Related to Demographics,” Galati testified that information that has come in “has not commenced an investigation.”

That may very well be true because the Demographics unit should not be used to initiate investigations. It’s meant as a data base tool to locate already known suspects. Where they might live, find people who speak their language, have familiar foods, etc.

Now the headline itself is a problem. Muslim spying led to no leads, terror cases. Is that true? No, of course not.
NYC Terror Plot Suspect Mohammed Mamdouh Says He Is Innocent

Mamdough now says he had no problems with Jews or anyone else and just had the bad luck of being around when an undercover police officer overheard Ferhani talking about blowing up buildings.

And this guy was under surveillance for 3 years before he was arrested

Law enforcement officials had been watching Pimentel, who has also lived in Schenectady, N.Y., since 2009.

Of these and about 15-16 other cases were solved with surveillance by NY police, just not by the Demographics unit, because that’s not what they’re supposed to do.