By Rev. Chloe Breyer / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, July 24, 2013, 4:30 AM

With his name circulating as a possible pick to be the new homeland security secretary, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is again in the national spotlight.

But from a faith perspective, there are blemishes on his record. While NYPD programs including the Hate Crimes Task Force and the Clergy Liaison Program have been good for religious leaders, the department’s decade-long practice of mapping Muslims and targeting houses of worship for special surveillance has equated religiosity with radicalization.

This is a mistake that must not be repeated nationally.

As the director of the Interfaith Center of New York, a community organization that has for more than a decade worked with public institutions and grass-roots faith leaders from at least 15 different religious traditions, I have seen firsthand the professionalism of the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force. And the department’s Clergy Liaison Program, enrolling more than 500 religious leaders citywide, has helped bridge community-precinct divides.

But these good works have been undercut by the systematic surveillance of Muslims in the city and beyond, a practice Kelly began after 9/11 but that was only uncovered in a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press investigative series. As the NYPD has come to see rising mosque attendance, praying more often and even abstaining from smoking as potentially suspicious behaviors, the department has tracked “even its closest partners in anti-terrorism work, including imams who frequently appeared at the mayor’s side.” That quote is from a 2013 report by the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project at CUNY Law School, summarizing The AP’s findings.

The department has sent officers and informants into other cities, without notifying law enforcement or elected officials there, to track and map Muslim faith communities.

It has even monitored students at Hunter College (again, without informing school officials), with an informant reporting on a university-sanctioned Muslim group.

As the CLEAR report put it, “NYPD agents were documenting how many times a day Muslim students prayed during a university whitewater rafting trip, which Egyptian businesses shut their doors for daily prayers, which restaurants played Al Jazeera, and which Newark businesses sold halal products and alcohol.”

A suit against the department filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups this month contends all this has had a chilling effect on religious expression for religious leaders and practitioners. One of the plaintiffs is Hamid Hassan Raza, the imam at Masjid Al-Ansar, a Brooklyn mosque. Raza leads prayer services, conducts religious education classes and provides counseling to members of the community.

The NYPD has tracked him and his mosque since at least 2008, according to the suit, and Raza now records his sermons out of fear that an officer or informant might misquote him or take a statement out of context.

He also steers clear of certain religious topics to avoid statements that the NYPD or its informants might perceive as controversial.In a letter to President Obama this week, the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition expressed concerns about the prospect of Kelly taking the top homeland security seat.

The problems go beyond the surveillance — to include his promotion of negative Muslim stereotypes in a 2007 NYPD report, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” and in the screening of the virulently anti-Muslim 2008 propaganda film “The Third Jihad.”

Kelly’s willingness to stretch his department’s mandate and to test constitutional limits by monitoring people of faith because of their faith should give us all serious pause. Unless and until the NYPD proves it is ready to treat New Yorkers of all faiths equally, Obama would do well to look elsewhere for a terror-fighter.

Breyer is the executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York and assistant priest at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Harlem.