Taking swings at NYPD
Last Updated: 4:44 AM, February 26, 2012
Posted: 12:23 AM, February 26, 2012
Michael Goodwin
In keeping with the spirit that no good deed goes unpunished, the New York Police Department is now a pinata. There have been no successful terror attacks in 10 years, crime is near historic lows — so naturally, a growing gang of loons, ideologues and dupes is lining up to take its whacks at the NYPD.
The twin-barreled assault is aimed at the department’s key anti-terror and anti-crime policies, with critics saying both are too aggressive and based on racial and ethnic profiling.
Those are easy charges to make — if you’re the type who believes fairy dust and magic made the city safer than it has been in 50 years. In the real world, the mean streets were tamed through hard, smart and dangerous police work that aims to prevent crime and terror, not just react to it.
Indeed, it’s one of the great advances of modern government, the idea that policing can do more than just catch the bad guys after the fact, but can actually save lives within a strict legal framework of restraint. Mayor Bloomberg has even taken to calling police officers and firefighters “first preventers” instead of first responders.
Yet, if the critics have their way, New York will find itself riding a time machine, back to the days when nobody was safe.
Thankfully, Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly are standing together against the barrage. “We’re not going to let up,” the mayor said on WOR radio Friday. “We have not forgotten the lesson of that terrible day on 9/11, and we are not going to forget that.”
Kelly’s resolve matches the mayor’s.
“We’re going to continue doing what we’ve been doing,” he told me. “Our policies are very carefully vetted and according to the law and the Constitution.”
Kelly saw the dark side and is determined not to see it again. The former Marine was the top cop during parts of the high-crime era and the first attack on the Twin Towers in 1993. He worries that too many New Yorkers forget or never knew how dangerous life was in those days. He wants to make sure they don’t learn through experience.
“We’re not going to let that happen again,” he said of a rising tide of crime and terror. “It’s not going to happen on my watch, or on the mayor’s watch.”
The assault is coming from all directions, with even New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie piling on. A simmering resentment over stop-and-frisk has been joined by attacks on the anti-terror intelligence-gathering operations. The coincidence, if that’s what it is, is exacerbated by Democratic mayoral candidates jockeying for advantage.
Bloomberg sees “worrisome” signs about the candidates’ instincts and urges voters to “ask anybody who is running for office, ‘What will you do?’ ”
Kelly warned of the bloody consequences if the next mayor stops playing offense. “There will be increased violence, and people will die,” he said, adding that guilty pols “will ultimately have to answer for that.”
He is articulate in explaining the rationale for both policies, starting with the use of stop-and-frisk to search for illegal weapons. He recently displayed small pictures of 504 murder victims from last year. “They all look pretty similar,” he said, noting that about 95 percent of shooting victims are black and Hispanic, most of them male. Their killers reflect similar demographics, but, as Kelly added, “nobody will say it.”
As for terrorism, he notes the dozen or so plots the NYPD has disrupted involving Muslims, but believes more are coming. “The target is too inviting,” he said. “This is the capital of the world, and we can’t sit back and hope the federal government will do it. We have to take care of ourselves.”
For the sake and safety of all New Yorkers, Godspeed.