Allow the NYPD to Protect Us

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and his team recognize that they are the buffer between New Yorkers (and visitors to our city) and those who would do to us what was done to the victims of the Boston tragedy. Scores of them are still in the hospital and beginning the long road to rehabilitation; they could have been any of us or our loved ones.

It is difficult for many of us who are blessed and live in this amazing democracy to recognize that we have to see not just the good in people, but realistically come to terms with the evil that lives among us. As much as we want to be optimists, we have to prepare to live as though the pessimists are right. It takes some degree of introspection for anyone to try to go into the mind of someone who is prepared to take innocent lives the way the Tsarnaev brothers or the bloodthirsty goons in London did. However, these horrendous acts help us to realize just why we need to be more vigilant and, more importantly, ensure that the NYPD — not criminals and terrorists — gets the benefit of the doubt. There are ample resources to review NYPD actions from within government at the city, state and federal level, as well as media and civil liberties organizations.

For a lengthy period of time, the Tsarnaev brothers had to be scouting out locations, acquiring the equipment, preparing their cover stories and perhaps even testing miniature versions of the bomb. These two (and any accomplices they may have had) were visualizing the carnage, fantasizing how many lives would be lost and destroyed, and daydreaming of how this would give them hero status among enemies of freedom and monsters of terror. Likewise, the London murderers preened for the cameras after they butchered a human being.

There is an evil psychology that we are not used to dealing with or even thinking about, which is why we must more than ever strengthen law enforcement at the policing and prosecution levels, not attempt to weaken them.

Every New Yorker who lived through the 1960s and 1970s here — eras of growing crime and violence in the streets, when it seemed the police were powerless to stop it — understands just how important an effective police department can truly be. The turnaround that has brought about a safe and secure city began when Mayor David Dinkins recognized the failings of his police department and appointed Ray Kelly as Commissioner. It was continued and refined during the Giuliani Administration. Nearly 12 years ago, Mayor Bloomberg empowered Ray Kelly to be the most creative and innovative police commissioner in New York history just months after the 9/11 terror attacks. We went from murders and muggings to planes being flown into the Twin Towers, and that meant unprecedented approaches to fighting crime and terror.

My father, of blessed memory, would have loved Commissioner Kelly. Commissioner Kelly is indeed sensitive to the need to preserve and protect civil liberties, but he also recognizes that a society must first and foremost ensure the safety of its citizens. My dad used to say that political correctness takes open-mindedness to the extreme — where people’s brains fall out and they stop thinking rationally. Alert, observant and lucky, he was also devoted to the safety of his family and taught me to be the same.

Commissioner Kelly has said that we have been incredibly lucky to prevent a terror act. Terrorists only have to get lucky once; we have to be lucky and effective 100 percent of the time. Commissioner Kelly’s effectiveness, with G-d’s help, will continue to make us fortunate. Let’s make sure he has the tools he needs to keep our loved ones safe.

This article appeared in print on page 36 of the May 29th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.