In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security named Minneapolis as one of the pilot cities where Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policing would be implemented. CVE was a recently established program, formally implemented by the Obama administration in 2011, whereby local law enforcement (the Minneapolis Police Department) collaborated closely with federal security agents to help identify prospective “homegrown radicals” and try to prevent them from enlisting with a terrorist organization or taking part in a terror attack. CVE policing focused almost entirely on Muslims and concentrated on Muslim communities like the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis that Ahmed called home. Religious piety was considered by CVE policing policy to be one of the signals of a Muslim becoming radicalized, particularly when the shift toward religiosity was an abrupt one.

DEFINE: Clarifies what Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policing was and how it operated, targeting Muslim communities based on religious signals.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 360