After the bombing on 23rd Street, the NYPD did a splendid job of locating and neutralizing another bomb on 27th Street. Likewise, New Jersey police did an outstanding job of tracking down, confronting, and arresting Ahmad Rahami, the terrorist responsible for the bombings in Manhattan and in Seaside Park, New Jersey.
Our knowledge about what to do after terrorist attacks seems to have improved, but our ability to prevent them may have declined.
Take the NYPD. Up until recently, it had an excellent record of uncovering and foiling jihad plots. That’s because the NYPD had a proactive policy of surveilling and even infiltrating mosques, Muslim student groups, and other potential centers of radicalization. Then in 2014, under pressure from Muslim activist groups who called the program discriminatory, the surveillance program was shut down, and with it an important vehicle for preventing terror attacks. Two years before the NYPD was hamstrung, a similar shutdown occurred on the national level. In 2012, in response to pressure from Muslim advocacy groups (sound familiar?), the White House ordered a purge of training materials used by the FBI, the Department of Defense, and a dozen other national security agencies. From that point on, investigative agents were forbidden to make any connection between terrorism and Islam. – READ MORE
