LA police plan to map Muslims

Is the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) snooping on Muslims? 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. There are an estimated 5,00,000 Muslims in LA, Orange and Riverside counties.