Opinion

The commish cops out

The decision to end an NYPD anti-terror program that collected information on local Muslim communities is worrisome, because, as we said Wednesday, it may hamper efforts to thwart jihadi attacks. But it also raises questions about the official who made the decision: Bill Bratton.

That’s because our police commissioner once backed a similar “mapping” program as Los Angeles’ top cop, only to later scrap the idea under political pressure.

Indeed, back in 2007, he defended the tactic passionately and loudly castigated its “outrageous” critics: “We are not profiling,” Bratton said then. “This is not a profiling issue. This is not reminiscent of Nazi Germany…This is an effort to know and understand the communities we’re policing.”

The LAPD under Bratton said it wanted to do precisely what the NYPD would later do under Ray Kelly: “identify [Muslim] communities…which may be susceptible to violent ideologically based extremism.” But local Muslim groups and the ACLU denounced the program, and within days Bratton scrapped it.

Part of the objection then was that there was no real problem of home-grown terrorists. But that’s changed dramatically: In 2009, then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned that “home-based terrorism is here. And, like violent terrorism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture that we must now confront.”

New York, in particular, has seen more than its share of threats from such home-grown radicals. Yet Bratton shut down Gotham’s program nonetheless.

That’s what’s so worrisome. Commissioner Bratton once seemed to appreciate the value of the mapping program: to help authorities get fuller knowledge of where terrorists might hide, as Seth Lipsky illustrates on the preceding page.

Actually, even Mayor de Blasio initially said the NYPD had handled its program “in a legal and appropriate manner, with the right checks and balances,” though he later reversed himself. Perhaps Bratton is now merely taking orders from his boss, the mayor. Whatever the case, it’s little comfort for New Yorkers concerned about terror.