NYPD: Guilty! Of saving lives

From NY's Police Commissioner Ray Kelly writing in the Wall Street Journal-

Since 2002, the New York Police Department has taken tens of thousands of weapons off the street through proactive policing strategies. The effect this has had on the murder rate is staggering. In the 11 years before Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office, there were 13,212 murders in New York City. During the 11 years of his administration, there have been 5,849. That's 7,383 lives saved—and if history is a guide, they are largely the lives of young men of color.

To critics, none of this seems to much matter. Sidestepping the fact that these policies work, they continue to allege that massive numbers of minorities are stopped and questioned by police for no reason other than their race.

Racial profiling is a disingenuous charge at best and an incendiary one at worst, particularly in the wake of the tragic death of Trayvon Martin. The effect is to obscure the rock-solid legal and constitutional foundation underpinning the police department's tactics and the painstaking analysis that determines how we employ them.

Read Ray Kelly: The NYPD: Guilty of Saving 7,383 Lives and let me know what you think about the Commish's arguments.

An Ovation for the NYPD

I haven't commented on the uproar surrounding revelations that the NYPD was using 21st Century methods to prevent terror.  I am referring to its using the Internet to look at Muslim related websites in order to see what's happening out there.

Politicians in NJ are tripping over each other to run to the microphone in order to condemn the NYPD for spying.  Why NJ you may ask?  How about it being a breeding ground the radical Muslims who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993?

The way I see it, most websites are open to the public and anyone, and I mean anyone, can view them or even sign up for those that require registration.  There should be no expectation of privacy on posts to the Web.

You may say this is trite, but if you use the Internet, you should expect others to read what you post.  And if it's hostile and threatening, you should expect that someone is going to look further.

In any event, here's an editorial from the New York Sun addressing the issue.
An Ovation for the NYPD

What do you think?

Stephen M. Flatow alisa flatow

The Riverdale Bomb Plot

Thank God for such a thing as informants, the men and women who have fallen into the hands of the law but whom, as part of a plea bargain or some other type deal, ally themselves with the folks who arrested them in the first place. Such is the type of police work that brought down a plot to bomb two synagogues, Jewish houses of worship, a few blocks from each other in the Bronx, NY neighborhood of Riverdale.

According to first reports in The New York Times, four men were arrested in “what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.”

“The men, all of whom live in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City, were arrested around 9 p.m. after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, officials said. But the men did not know the bombs, obtained with the help of an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were fake.”

Hopefully, the media, print, radio and television, will pay more attention to this case than it has done in other cases and give it the exposure it deserves. Let’s face it; there are terrorists in our cities who mean us harm. They are a cancer in our midst and exposing them to the light of day is good medicine.

We'll be following this story as events unfurl.

Planning for Mumbai-style Attack - a follow-up

We previously wrote about NYPD Trains for Mumbai-style Attack. John Yoo, writing in the Wall Street Journal, "Yes, We Did Plan for Mumbai-Style Attacks in the U.S. Why the latest assault on Bush anti-terror strategy could make us less safe," compares the Bush administration's response to al-Qaeda's attacks and the threat of a Mumbai-style attack happening here with new policies of the Obama administration.

Suppose al Qaeda branched out from crashing airliners into American cities. Using small arms, explosives, or biological, chemical or nuclear weapons they could seize control of apartment buildings, stadiums, ships, trains or buses. As in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, texting and mobile email would make it easy to coordinate simultaneous assaults in a single city.

After 9/11, we had a responsibility to consider all possible threats.In the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on New York City and Washington, D.C., these were hypotheticals no more. They became real scenarios for which responsible civilian and military leaders had to plan. The possibility of such attacks raised difficult, fundamental questions of constitutional law, because they might require domestic military operations against an enemy for the first time since the Civil War. Could our armed forces monitor traffic in a city where terrorists were preparing to strike, search for cells using surveillance technology, or use force against a hijacked vessel or building?

According to Yoo, while the military did its job, "it was the duty of the government to plan for worst-case scenarios -- even if, thankfully, those circumstances never materialized." Such efforts raised "unprecedented questions under the most severe time pressures."

Judging from the media coverage of Justice Department memos from those days --released this week by the Obama administration -- this careful contingency planning amounted to a secret plot to overthrow the Constitution and strip Americans of their rights. As the New York Times has it, Bush lawyers "rush into sweeping away this country's most cherished rights." "Irresponsible," harrumphed former Clinton administration Justice Department officials.

Yoo's article does not descend into an apologia for Bush administration tactics. It is a look at the Constitutional underpinnings of the post-9/11 actions of the government going as far back as Alexander Hamilton's opinions on the use of Federal force.

To blame Yoo and others for abuse of Constitutional powers is just silly and that's what is "irresponsible."

There's a good history lesson here, one that folks on the left and right should read. Read the full article.

NYPD Trains for Mumbai-style Attack

We recently posted The Coming Swarm - Get ready for small attacks regarding the likelihood of Mumbai-style attacks in the United States.

Well, it looks as though the New York Police Department is planning for such an event. In an AP story posted today,

"NYPD officials say the mission at their firearms training facility reflects their belief that the city is vulnerable to a New York sequel to the Indian siege, and their determination not to be outgunned."

Makes sense to me. And a good example of fine police work in anticipating the worst. Will other cities follow through?