While Presidents boast about "keeping us safe" and "wars on terror", the real heroes of our national security are the cops and law enforcement officials in the fray of battle. They're the ones who thwart terrorism before it ever happens, who keep their eyes out for the bad guys, and it's a hard, nearly impossible job.
A newly published book called Securing the City by Christopher Dickey is about the NYPD after 9/11. The hero of this book is Ray Kelly, our city's current Police Commissioner, who revolutionized the police department to fight terrorism. Law enforcement tactics of the past aren't enough, as Kelly clearly realized.
Today's NYPD is not just cops on the beat and Swat teams -- it's a hyper-modern, technologically-sophisticated intelligence gathering machine that works 24/7. Like the CIA, it has agents all over the world, sniffing out threats to NYC. Wherever, whenever a terrorist hits around the world, the NYPD goes there to investigate and see how a similar act could be carried out in New York. As the saying goes, terrorists around the world are obsessed with hitting New York City -- and always will be. But, if Dickey is right, NYC is better prepared for it than ever before.
Most scarily, a lot of terrorists were and are inspired to attacked NYC because of movies from the 1990s like Independence Day and Godzilla which included lots of wholesale destruction of this city. I guess the arguments that violence in the media causes violence in reality hold some merit -- in ways we never imagined.
A newly published book called Securing the City by Christopher Dickey is about the NYPD after 9/11. The hero of this book is Ray Kelly, our city's current Police Commissioner, who revolutionized the police department to fight terrorism. Law enforcement tactics of the past aren't enough, as Kelly clearly realized.
Today's NYPD is not just cops on the beat and Swat teams -- it's a hyper-modern, technologically-sophisticated intelligence gathering machine that works 24/7. Like the CIA, it has agents all over the world, sniffing out threats to NYC. Wherever, whenever a terrorist hits around the world, the NYPD goes there to investigate and see how a similar act could be carried out in New York. As the saying goes, terrorists around the world are obsessed with hitting New York City -- and always will be. But, if Dickey is right, NYC is better prepared for it than ever before.
Most scarily, a lot of terrorists were and are inspired to attacked NYC because of movies from the 1990s like Independence Day and Godzilla which included lots of wholesale destruction of this city. I guess the arguments that violence in the media causes violence in reality hold some merit -- in ways we never imagined.
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