Anti-Muslim rhetoric from GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and other politicians makes counterterrorism efforts on the ground "very difficult," New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Monday, while building hatred against a vital part of his community.
"You can imagine if you're a Muslim police officer," Bratton told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, explaining that he has nearly 1,000 Muslims serving in his department in various capacities, including counterterrorism.
"I can imagine how they feel they came to this country to get away from tyranny and to hear themselves if you will, portrayed as somehow or another enemies of our country, it hurts."
Further, he said, Belgium has a "unique set of circumstances" that are far different than in the United States.
"Quite clearly Europe's problem is that the security agencies across the various countries are not communicating with each other to the degree we do here," said Bratton.
"We learned after 9/11 that we needed to communicate better so we have fusion centers throughout the country staffed by federal, state, local sheriff's departments and in New York we have the largest of them all and it's about the sharing of information, about collaboration."
And in New York, "the counterterrorism efforts are vast and huge," Bratton told the show, and his city has a large Muslim population from all over the world, numbering 700,000 to 800,000 people.
Meanwhile, he credited his predecessor, Ray Kelly, for putting together a foundation that's being built on.
"We're attempting to repair damaged relationships with the Muslim community that has been broken because they felt we were spying on them, trying to intimidate them, not concerned with their concerns," said Bratton.
"We've learned with the past, much as we've had the same issues with African-American communities over these many generations, that you cannot police a community without effectively working with them. And we work very hard at that."
Over the weekend, Bratton argued in a heated opinion piece for the
New York Daily News that Cruz, who has called for additional policing in Muslim communities and complained about the disbanding of a demographics unit, knows nothing of the efforts that are in play.
The Demographics Unit disbanded, said Bratton, because it had dwindled to just two officers, who had little to do. Meanwhile, he said his department patrols all neighborhoods, and he won't allow it to become "an occupying force" to appease politicians.
New York's counterterrorism efforts center around several departments, Bratton said, including:
- The Joint-Terrorism Task Force, with the FBI, has more than 100 NYPD detectives working full time on counterterrorism investigations.
- The Critical Response Command, founded through Mayor Bill de Blasio's office, deploys more than 500 officers to critical sites and potential targets, and the officers can engage heavily armed terrorists without delay as quickly as possible.
- The NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau, which encompasses both the Joint Terrorism Task Force and Critical Response Command, also has a 40-officer bomb squad; a 150-officer World Trade Center Command, and other units along with a public-private partnership, SHIELD, which includes 15,000 property and business owners.
- The NYPD Intelligence Bureau has police and civilian intelligence analysts who constantly vet leads and rumors to keep the threat picture updated, and maintains liaison officers in cities around the world.
- The NYPD Domain Awareness System features a sophisticated network of cameras, license plate readers and more to relay real-time information across the city.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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