NYPD Intelligence
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly speaks at a news conference as Mayor Michael Bloomberg listens in Brooklyn, N.Y., Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011...
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly speaks at a news conference as Mayor Michael Bloomberg listens in Brooklyn, N.Y., Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011. Activists upset at police efforts to spy on Muslims plan to skip the mayor's annual year-end interfaith breakfast on Friday, Dec. 30, saying Bloomberg shouldn't be defending the tactics. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)
NYPD Intelligence
Linda Sarsour, director of the Arab American Association of New York, poses for photos in front of a canvas painted by the association's youth group ...
Linda Sarsour, director of the Arab American Association of New York, poses for photos in front of a canvas painted by the association's youth group at its headquarters in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011. Sarsour is one of the civic and religious leaders who signed a letter declining an invitation from Mayor Michael Bloomberg to attend an interfaith breakfast in protest of recent revelations about the New York City Police Department's surveillance activities. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)
NYPD Inteligence
Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur Rashid poses for a portrait, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011 in New York. Fifteen Muslim clerics and community leaders say they wil...
Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur Rashid poses for a portrait, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011 in New York. Fifteen Muslim clerics and community leaders say they will boycott New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's annual interfaith breakfast Friday over a police effort to gather intelligence on Muslim neighborhoods, whose existence was revealed recently in a series of Associated Press articles. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg held his annual interfaith breakfast, but he didn't directly address a boycott by Muslim leaders upset about police spying on their followers.
Friday's morning's breakfast was held without 15 Muslim leaders. They told the mayor in a letter that they disagree with his position following a series of articles by The Associated Press exposing the police department's methods.
The AP series detailed police department efforts to infiltrate Muslim neighborhoods and mosques with aggressive programs designed by a CIA officer. Bloomberg has defended the tactics.
At the breakfast, Bloomberg quoted his father as telling him that "discrimination against anyone is discrimination against everyone."
He also said: "We have to keep our guard up, but if we don't work together we won't have our own freedoms."
