9/11 forever changed how the NYPD views its mission and the world around us. As soon as the Bloomberg administration took office, we quickly reorganized our operations to address the threat of terrorism. We could not defer this responsibility to others.
We immediately increased the number of detectives assigned to the Joint Terrorist Task Force with the FBI. On 9/11 just 17 detectives served on the city’s JTTF. We increased that number to more than 120. Since then, the JTTF has functioned as our chief conduit for receiving intelligence developed overseas about terrorist plots related to New York.
In 2002, in addition to strengthening our federal partnerships, we became the first police department in the country to put in place our own Counterterrorism Bureau. We established a division within this bureau, responsible for training and equipping all of our 35,000 police officers for counterterrorism duties. We’ve competed with the State Department and others to attract Ivy-League trained analysts with international expertise to our Counterterrorism and Intelligence Divisions.
Our intelligence-gathering is greatly supported by the senior officers we’ve assigned as liaisons to police and intelligence agencies in 11 cities around the world. From these locations, our liaisons can easily travel to the scenes of terrorist attacks that occur throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
With every major attack or conspiracy we want to know the specific tactics used, the type of weaponry and explosives involved, where the planning was conducted and the nature of the targets. We want all our liaisons to ask themselves “the New York question”: How can the lessons learned from this attack be applied to New York City?
The NYPD is fortunate to have a deep pool of bilingual officers. Since 2002, we have made a concerted effort to tap into this resource, by recruiting more officers from minority and immigrant communities. In 2006, for the first time, the rank of police officer became majority-minority.
In addition to helping us work well with the communities we serve, this emphasis on diversity has led to the NYPD having more foreign-language speakers than any other police department in the world.
The death of Osama bin Laden was a success with complications. We have to assume there are bin Laden disciples who would like nothing better than to avenge his death by striking New York City one more time. We’re continuing to monitor al Qaeda Central, by watching for Web-indoctrinated lone wolves, and by the emerging threat to the West and to New York City by al Qaeda’s web of regional affiliates in Yemen, Somalia, North Africa and more.
Our Intelligence Division is tracking how anyone associated with these groups or others would enter New York, and how they would communicate and conceal themselves here. If they entered via Canada, at which land crossing? What internet café in which borough would they be likely to use? At which SRO would they find lodging? Establishing this kind of knowledge base to alert us to a terrorist presence in the New York metropolitan area takes a concerted effort on our part. And it’s one we must sustain, despite having 6,000 fewer officers in our ranks today than we did 10 years ago.
Would we put an undercover officer in an Islamic bookstore? Yes, if that’s what was required to defeat a homegrown terrorist like Matin Siraj from plotting to bomb Herald Square station. Would we have an undercover or a confidential informant get close to a fellow New Yorker? Yes, if that New Yorker was someone like Ahmed Ferhani, who pledged to “blow up a synagogue in Manhattan and take out the whole entire building.” Would we use a confidential informant to help Upstate police bring three suspects in a white-supremacist group to justice? Yes, if they were plotting to attack the US Army’s Watervliet arsenal with homemade explosives.
These were all instances in which undercover officers and confidential sources deployed by the NYPD Intelligence Division stopped dangerous individuals in their tracks.
Will we continue to deploy officers in places like Amman, Abu Dhabi, Montreal, Toronto, Paris, Lyon, Singapore, Santo Domingo, Madrid, Tel Aviv and London? Yes, and in other places too, if only to give us a few time zones’ worth of preparation to protect the New York City subway system from the kinds of attacks we’ve seen abroad. We’ll also continue to staff at robust levels the Joint Terrorist Task Force with the FBI, and we’ll preserve our relationship with the CIA to learn everything we can about foreign enemies who may want to kill New Yorkers.
Excerpted from Police Commisioner Ray Kelly’s remarks at yesterday’s Manhattan Institute Conference on “Lessons Learned Since Sept. 11.”