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.
Sorry sight: Bowing to the terrorist mob
The Syrian government slaughters its own people, terrorists launch horrific suicide bombings in Iraq, the Taliban start a new campaign of beheadings, an Afghan soldier murders two American soldiers — and Barack Obama apologizes.
The news from the Mideast produces a here-we-go-again feeling, not least because of the president’s craven response. Instead of putting into context the mistake of burning Islamic religious books by recalling how America has liberated millions of innocent Muslims from other, monstrous Muslims, Obama added fuel to the fire with his apology and promise to hold the guilty accountable. He can begin his witch hunt as soon as the GIs return from the funerals of their comrades killed by Afghan mobs.
The false terrorist narrative that America is on a crusade in Muslim lands won’t go away by our begging for forgiveness every time we screw up. Our clumsy handling of the Koran and other books is no excuse for murder, and the president ought to have been brave enough to say so.
Instead, he bows to the mob, a weakness that can only be seen as justifying the blood lust. Three years into the job and more than 1,500 of our soldiers dead on his watch at the hands of Muslim terrorists, you’d think he would have learned as much.
Perhaps Obama will find time to apologize to the families of the two murdered soldiers and to those of two more officers killed yesterday. Or are their lives less valuable than a few scraps of paper?
‘Struggling’ with irony
Think of it as gilt for guilt.
Michelle Obama, just back from a skiing trip to Aspen, her 16th vacation as first lady, tried shame at an Ohio fund-raiser, saying that “if a family in this country is struggling, we cannot be satisfied with our own families’ good fortune.”
“Who do we want to be?” Obama asked. “Will we be a country where success is limited to the few at the top? This country is strongest when we are all better off.”
Her listeners paid up to $10,000 each for the pleasure of her scolding, which was so passionate that she’ll probably need a 17th vacation.
G
ood luck is bailing Mitt out
Mitt Romney needs a catchy slogan, so here’s a suggestion: Better Lucky Than Good.
Romney doesn’t stir many souls, but he is fortunate in his GOP rivals, who tend to collapse after passing him in the polls. Rick Santorum seems headed for the same fate ahead of Michigan’s primary.
Yet Romney can’t quite seize the moment. His speech Friday on tax cuts and entitlement reform is the basis of a good contrast with President Obama. Inexplicably, however, Romney gave the speech to 1,200 people in a football stadium with 65,000 seats.
Once again, Better Lucky Than Good.
Price of duplicity
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, once caught skimming on his own taxes, demands the wealthy pay more for “the privilege of being an American.”
Silly you for thinking liberty is a God-given right. Turns out you must buy it with cash.