Some three dozen members of Congress — Brooklyn Democrat Yvette Clark among them — have jumped on the anti-NYPD bandwagon.
They’re demanding that the Justice Department and the House Judiciary Committee probe the department’s spectacularly successful anti-terrorism unit.
That the NYPD, under Commissioner Ray Kelly, has managed to foil no fewer than 14 terrorist plots against the city since 9/11 doesn’t seem to matter.
The legislators are up in arms over a dubious Associated Press series alleging that the NYPD (in conjunction with the CIA) is “profiling” Muslim-Americans with a network of undercover agents and informants.
AP’s latest installment came on Friday.
But also on Friday, the CIA’s inspector general said an internal probe found no wrongdoing in the agency’s anti-terror partnership with the NYPD.
No matter. “We cannot allow the explicit profiling and targeting of Muslim-Americans by the very people who are tasked with protecting and serving their community,” whined Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.).
Not to put too fine a point on it, but protecting their community is precisely what the NYPD is doing. And doing a remarkable job of it to boot, given that New York remains the top target of radical Islamist terrorists.
Just last month, the anti-terrorism squad nabbed homegrown extremist José Pimentel, aka Muhammad Yusuf, just an hour or so before he would’ve completed making three homemade bombs.
He planned to target GIs and Marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, declaring that “Islamic law obligates all true Muslims to wage war against the United States.”
To their credit, Kelly and other top police officials refuse to apologize for their anti-terror strategy.
“We don’t racially profile,” Kelly told a uniformly hostile City Council committee recently. “We follow leads wherever they take us.”
Exactly right. Because, while Chu, Clarke and their colleagues don’t want to admit it, there is a very good reason why anti-terror investigations often lead to the Muslim-American community.
It’s because that’s where the threat often resides, particularly given the growing danger of homegrown Islamist radicals.
It goes without saying that not all Muslims are terrorists. No one claims that. And there’s no evidence that the NYPD believes it, either.
The AP may be trolling for a Pulitzer Prize — which is its right. The congressmen may be pandering to the leftist anti-cop crowd; they’re entitled to do that, too.
But such rank opportunism by either of them shouldn’t be mistaken for community service — particularly if it winds up hamstringing the very folks who stand between New Yorkers and another terror attack.
Keeping this city safe requires prudent, proactive steps.
Just be glad New York’s Finest are taking those steps.