Excerpt:
As the controversy deepens over the New York Police Department's efforts to monitor and map local Muslim communities, a majority of New York City voters say that the police have been effective in combating terrorism, and reject the notion that the department's counterterrorism program has unfairly focused on Muslims, according to a poll released on Tuesday.
According to the poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University, 58 percent of voters said the department acted appropriately in its efforts to fight terrorism and did not unfairly target Muslims; 29 percent disagreed. The department's efforts drew greater support from Republicans than Democrats, and from whites than blacks or Hispanics. But in all those cases, a plurality supported the department's efforts.
"New Yorkers brush aside the gripes about police surveillance of the Muslim community," the director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, Maurice Carroll, said in a statement.