Was our government involved in the overseas abduction and torture of an American citizen? Do we have the right to know the answer to that question? That is the issue the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals must decide in an appeal filed last week by Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles and the ACLU of Southern California.

Those groups have been attempting to get this information for the last three years through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The case, filed on behalf of Naji Hamdan, a former resident of Hawthorne, CA, remains a troubling reminder of our government’s failure to fully acknowledge its use of the abusive practice of “proxy detention.” (The term refers to the practice by the U.S. government of enlisting a friendly foreign government to detain U.S. citizens abroad, without providing them the legal protections they would be afforded in the U.S.)
Hamdan is an American citizen of Lebanese descent who has never been arrested or convicted for any offense in the United States. The FBI and other government agencies intensively surveilled him, like many other Muslims across the country, for several years while he lived in southern California. He eventually moved, with his wife and children, to the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.). In the summer of 2008, FBI agents from southern California flew to the U.A.E. and interrogated him at the U.S. embassy there for several hours. Approximately four weeks later, the U.A.E.’s state security forces arrived at his house and abducted him, placing him in an undisclosed location – he effectively disappeared.
Because the U.A.E. was (and remains) a close ally of the United States in national security matters, and because FBI agents from southern California had interrogated Hamdan just weeks before his abduction, his family filed a habeas petition against the U.S. government alleging that it was responsible for his detention. Days after the petition’s filing, the U.A.E. released him from the black site without any explanation, transferring him to a prison.
Once his family (and attorneys) were able to communicate with him, they learned still more disturbing aspects of the story, including that he had been subjected to horrific torture while at the black site, and that an unknown, apparently-American man had been present during at least one of his interrogation sessions.
Hamdan was eventually released from prison in the U.A.E. (after being convicted of unspecified offenses in a sham trial, sentenced to “time served,” and deported), and the U.S. government obtained a dismissal of the habeas case filed on his behalf.
Though the U.S. government has generally acknowledged its reliance on proxy detention to detain U.S. citizens abroad, it has not acknowledged its part in the proxy detention of Naji Hamdan or explained exactly what it said to the U.A.E. at the time of his abduction. This unlawful practice has been highly criticized by human rights and civil liberties advocates not only because of the ill treatment suffered by detainees, but also because the practice obstructs oversight over the treatment of detainees by the judiciary and Congress.
Through this appeal, Advancing Justice – LA and the ACLU of Southern California seek to obtain the truth about the U.S. government’s involvement in Hamdan’s horrific ordeal.
Zulaikha Aziz is staff attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles.

Since a federal court ruled the NYPD’s practice of aggressively stopping and searching residents unconstitutional, New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has been looking for someone to lead and reform the NYPD. He’s now tapped Bill Bratton, who steered the LAPD out from under a federal consent decree.
But the LAPD should not be New York’s model for stops.
More than a decade ago, concerns about racial profiling helped spur the federal government to place the Los Angeles Police Department under federal oversight, which included requirements that the department collect detailed data about its stops. The data show that, over the past decade, the LAPD’s record on the number of stops, and the racial disparities of those stops, has remained a persistent problem.
During federal oversight, an already high stop rate grew higher. In 2003, the first year after Bratton took over, the LAPD stopped 178,998 pedestrians. Pedestrian stops increased 80 percent to 274,950 by 2005, and have remained high — last year, 249,679.
These numbers, when closely scrutinized, resemble the figures that have caused such outrage in New York. The NYPD made 97,296 pedestrian stops in 2002, a number that increased under the now-repudiated stop-and-frisk tactics to a high of 685,724 stops by 2011. Though the LAPD stops a lower number of pedestrians, it polices a city with half the population of New York, and employs one-quarter the number of officers. Comparing the highest levels of pedestrian stops in Los Angeles and New York, Angelenos experienced just 15 percent fewer pedestrian stops per person than New Yorkers. Moreover, each LAPD officer, on average, actually conducted 60 percent more pedestrian stops than each NYPD officer. Accordingly, LAPD’s pedestrian stop rates are extraordinarily high relative to the NYPD’s — especially given the obvious truth that Angelenos generally walk much less than New Yorkers.
The LAPD’s stops share another troubling problem with the NYPD: the burden of pedestrian stops falls disproportionately on communities of color. In Los Angeles from 2002 to the present, stops of African Americans consistently make up about one-third of LAPD’s pedestrian stops, though African Americans make up only about one-tenth of L.A.’s population. In New York, 53 percent of the stops were of African Americans, though they make up roughly 23 percent of that city’s population.
There are aspects where the LAPD is notably different from the NYPD. Under the guidance of the Department of Justice, the federal monitor, and the federal court, the LAPD responded to the disparities with some laudable measures — for instance, improving the quality of investigations into racial profiling complaints, and continuing that improvement long after the consent decree lifted. But years later, a move to install cameras in police cars, in an effort to help weed out racial profiling, has yet to be implemented, and none of the LAPD’s steps addressed the sheer number of stops or the racial disparities.
Although the LAPD has become famous for data-driven policing models, it has refused to conduct ongoing analysis of racial disparities to help identify and correct problems. More troubling, as soon as federal oversight ended in 2009, the LAPD stopped collecting detailed information about what happened during stops, blinding itself — and the public — to what officers are actually doing. If, as the saying goes, you manage what you measure, the LAPD isn’t inclined to figure out why its stops are so disproportional.
The numbers don’t suggest that the LAPD employs racists. The problem is more subtle than that, but no less real. A department that proudly holds out a commitment to constitutional policing has a moral duty to ensure some Angelenos don’t needlessly bear a disproportionate burden from policing because of their race. The LAPD has an obligation to continue to collect data, explain significant racial disparities, and make sure any such disparities not justified by public safety are eliminated. Until then, the LAPD’s record on stops is still a problem, and not one the NYPD should try to imitate.
Peter Bibring is a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California; originally published in the L.A. Daily News