Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik told Newsmax Saturday said that the "modus operandi" in the London attacks pointed to terrorism.
"It's premature to speculate as on who and what, but I think it's pretty obvious," Kerik, who commanded the city's forces during 9/11, told Newsmax in an exclusive interview. "This continues to be their modus operandi."
Metropolitan Police in London said that they were responding to reports of a van hitting as many as 20 pedestrians on London Bridge and stabbings at nearby Borough Market around 10:30 p.m. local time.
Police said "shots have been fired" in the Borough Market incident – and British Prime Minister Theresa May said the attacks were being investigated as terrorism.
Kerik told Newsmax that, following last month's Manchester suicide bombing that killed 23 people and injured 116 others, "the biggest issue is that we're not getting these guys in advance.
"This was an intelligence failure that I feel is catastrophic.
"In the Manchester attack, this guy was on their radar," Kerik explained, referring Salman Ramadan Abedi, 22, a British Muslim who detonated himself outside the Manchester Arena after an Ariana Grande concert.
He was known to British police but not considered a high risk, according to news reports.
"Orlando, San Bernardino, the Boston Marathon guys," Kerik said. "We continue to see, over and over and over again, that these guys are on the radar of the authorities – and yet, we have failed to stop these attacks."
Kerik attributed the lapses primarily to "political correctness."
"We won't go into the mosques. We won't go into the communities.
"We know who they are," he told Newsmax. "We've interviewed them. We've let them go – and they go out and mass murder a large number of innocent people.
"Our intelligence and surveillance capabilities are not working," Kerik said. "It has to get better."
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