The NYPD Sent Two Officers To The Kenyan Mall Shooting And Their Findings Are Directly Contradicted By The FBI's Report
from the TEAM-NYPD:-WORLD-POLICE dept
Just recently, we covered the NYPD's insistence on playing police force to the world by sending officers to foreign nations to impede investigations and damage international relations. Not only were these officers' presence unwelcome, but they were in no position to gather local intel as they lacked the security clearance needed to work directly with local law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The biggest motivator of the NYPD's Ugly American program was its feeling that the FBI wasn't sharing enough intel with it. Or doing it fast enough. Or competently enough. So, to beat the FBI at its own investigative game, Police Chief Ray Kelly sent NYPD officers to various locations around the world to gather better, faster intel for the city's anti-terrorist division. As Kelly himself noted as he exited office, the FBI just "can't be trusted" to protect New York from terrorist attacks. That's why local police officers have been stationed overseas for more than a decade at this point.
Inside officials, however, declared the program to be a waste of money that generated no useful intelligence, hardly an equitable exchange for arriving unbidden at crime scenes and annoying local agencies.
The flow of useless intelligence is still ongoing. As The Guardian reports, an FBI official's statement on the Kenyan Mall attack directly contradicts an earlier report compiled by officers sent by the NYPD.
Dennis Brady, the FBI legal attache in Nairobi, said in an interview posted Friday on the bureau's website: "We believe, as do the Kenyan authorities, that the four gunmen inside the mall were killed."This statement diverges greatly from the report compiled by two NYPD officers sent unbidden to Kenya while the siege was still underway. According to that report, the four attackers most likely escaped after turning away cameras recording their ad hoc HQ and making their way through the "loose perimeter" set up by the Kenyan military.
"Our ERT [Evidence Response Team] made significant finds, and there is no evidence that any of the attackers escaped from the area where they made their last stand," he said. A very secure crime scene perimeter made an escape unlikely, Brady added.
"Additionally, had the attackers escaped, it would have been publicly celebrated and exploited for propaganda purposes by al-Shabaab. That hasn't happened.”
The State Dept. wasted very little time distancing itself from this report, stating the NYPD's report "did not reflect the US government position."
The FBI, which beat the NYPD to the scene (arriving on day one), maintains that the perimeter was "secure." The NYPD claims the opposite. So, who's right? Well, if you consider the sources and what they respectively have to lose if they're wrong, it would appear that the FBI's conclusions are more apt to be accurate. After all, it does have an international presence and the clearances needed to work with local intelligence officials. The NYPD has none of these advantages and, as was noted earlier, a tendency to offend local agencies with their very existence. It's kind of hard to compile useful intel if the locals won't talk to you.
Worse, though, is the fact that the NYPD's overseas deployments tend to show up uninvited, giving law enforcement and intelligence agencies one more thing to worry about when securing a scene or, in this case, hunting down four terrorists in a crowded mall. Even if the NYPD's investigators are more skilled than the FBI's, the simple fact that they're uninvited renders them mostly useless. People expect the FBI -- a federal agency -- to appear at occurrences like these. What they don't expect to run into is an officer from a police department halfway around the world. The NYPD's foreign placements aspire to out-FBI the FBI, but undercut their own goal simply by existing.
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An American agency in Kenya? Unless there are Americans among the victims and/or the Kenyan authorities called for help then I have to disagree.
Also, I love how the NYPD thinks they are better than the motherfucking FBI. I, in all shcoked seriousness, will side with the FBI in this one if they decide to do some serious ass whipping against the NYPD to put them back where they belong...
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Do they want Egypt to get involved in investigations in the US, because an Egyptian tourist might have been involved?
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Is there something special about this mall?
Has the Kenyan version of the FBI been to mall shootings in America? Ever?
Somehow I doubt it.
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It takes assfuckery on a seriously absurd level to get me to side with the FBI. After getting over the shock of such an absurd level of assfuckery existing at all, it came as no surprise that the NYPD was the source of said assfuckery.
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Ah, you may be confused here. You see, NYPD is into general molesting (aka "frisking"). Assfuckery is more of a New Mexico PD thing.
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Did my reading comprehension suddenly stop working? It must have, because the quote above tells me no one actually knows.
"Believing" gunmen are dead is not the same thing as "Confirming" gunmen are dead.
Plus, if you consider the history of the FBI's track record, there's plenty of room to put plausibility in the NYPD report.
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Taxpayers money well spent.
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I mean that, they're literally seizing territory by claiming jurisdiction in sovereign nations that do not even want them and there's NO EVIDENCE that they're doing any actual good.
How can they? They don't know the language or the people and have no access to local intel.
I'll believe Bernie Madoff is a philanthropic saint before I believe a word out of their mouths!
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Or...
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Oh, I forgot: you pay city income tax as well on top of federal and NY state. If you commute form NJ or CT you pay their state income tax on the top as well. Four in all.
Did I mention that in order to have an illuminated sign of you business within the NYC city limits you need $300/year license from the city?
Now you know how Kelly could afford this crap.
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directly contradicts ?
this did not happen, personally I do have think "believe they did not get away" instils any more confidence that the NY Cops.
the fact the neither group could "confirm" or 'deny' they either got away or not, makes ALL of the US law enforcement look like morons.
You want to compare morons to morons, go for it. But posting "everyone fucked up" might make for less page hits.
All we can tell from this 'article' is Masnick hates the NY Cops more then the FBI. At least that is something.
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Re: directly contradicts ?
If you're just writing editorials to make yourself look insightful, well, mission accomplished. Again.
I really wish Techdirt would just knock it off.
-C
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Please tell us all what insights we are missing and fill in the gaps. I for one would love to be proved wrong and be shown how the ny police is helping to keep us safe, and sending officers to incidents like this aids the fight against terrorist attacks against ny.
Off you go
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Re: Re: directly contradicts ?
Please tell us all what insights we are missing and fill in the gaps. I for one would love to be proved wrong and be shown how the ny police is helping to keep us safe, and sending officers to incidents like this aids the fight against terrorist attacks against ny.
Off you go
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Because it uses up budget allocations so that the same or greater amounts will be allocated for the next fiscal year. That's how bureaucracies work.
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Care to enlighten us, then, what local cops think they're doing - unofficially and uninvited - at a crime scene halfway around the world?
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Added a few words for accuracy.
The writers for the site have praised police for good actions in the past, and defended officers when they felt that they were being unfairly treated, but the cops who give everyone else wearing a badge a bad name, and soil their reputation, get rightly called out for their abuses of authority, and that's a good thing, both for the public and those officers who actually deserve to hold their job.
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You may be in luck. I hear there's a space ship leaving for a one-way trip to Mars in a few years :)
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Any intel gathered?
Was there any reason at all to link the shootings to new york and thus assist the kenyans, or was there any intel gathered by these two officers that could possibly assist in preventing future attacks specifically against new york.
No? I would have had them escorted to the nearest airport.
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Re: Any intel gathered?
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Re: Any intel gathered?
The nearest jail would be better, as that is what the NYPD would do to any unauthorized interference with one of their investigations. Interfering with police is the charge they would use.
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Re: Any intel gathered?
Why give them the luxury of a plane ride? Escort them to the nearest coast and let them swim home. If you're feeling particularly merciful, maybe you can let them board a cargo ship. They should arrive in six months or so.
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I'm concerned about Police Chief Ray Kelly's, strategy, tactics, and leadership ability. His actions of sending police officers "away" from the areas they're supposed to be protecting, is questionable to say the least.
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New York Meglomania
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scene not locked down
so.. yeah, it was divergent from what the NYPD normally sees at their crime scenes.
Which are obviously the best in the world.
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Oh, but New York City is safe
After all, police work is HARD. Kibitzing someone else's investigation is easy.
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NYPD vs FBI
Gentlemen, we have the capability to do more than the FBI. Wronger...faster...and more offensive.
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First, NYPD states that their report is based on publicly available information. Detectives aren't sent abroad to become part of an official investigation. The author doesn't understand the purpose of the program he attempts to criticize. More on that below.
Second, NYPD did not race the FBI to Nairobi. So why would the author write that the FBI "beat" NYPD to Nairobi? He seems to think that NYPD is "competing" with the FBI to provide services to foreign countries. Again, the author illustrates his complete ignorance of the purpose of the program. More on that below.
Third, NYPD's International Liason Program doesn't exist to take over, or officially assist, in the investigation of a crime. It sends detectives to report back useful information to the NYPD. The idea is that detectives actually present on the scene might gather information useful to NYPD's own planning that may not be reported by journalists or may be only reported in a delayed fashion by the federal government. I'm not surprised that a member of the pajamas media might not grasp the significance of being on scene, but even the author's online research is shoddy. More on that below.
Fourth, NYPD didn't claim that four attackers escaped. Here is how CBS quotes the report (the report that the author of this article didn't read and didn't research): The “last confirmed sighting of the terrorists on the mall’s CCTV system takes place on Sunday, September 22, 2013 at 00:54 hours, 12 hours after the start of the attack,” reads the report. “It is unknown if the terrorists were killed or escaped the mall. A major contributing factor to this uncertainty was the failure to maintain a secure perimeter around the mall.” CBS News It takes a special kind of stupidity to fail to read a few, you know, actual news articles (where the occasional fact is reported) on the NYPD report that you're writing about.
Fifth, if you're going to write articles larded with poorly examined opinions and absurd mischaracterizations, at least do some basic research. Crap like this just wastes our time.
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NYC had the lowest number of recorded murders in 2013 since they began keeping records in the 1950s. It has an economy that is growing faster than the national average, an unemployment rate that is lower, and a balanced budget. There's nothing dystopian about it.
Keep in mind that NYC has over 8 million people, over 35,000 NYPD officers, an annual budget of 61 billion dollars (which is balanced, by the way), and the city government as a whole employs 325,000 people (more than all but three US state governments).
So they send a few NYPD detectives abroad, using PRIVATE FUNDS, because they know that there's a lot to learn from others, and they're willing to put in the hours to do so. It's humble, not arrogant; it's smart, not stupid; it's everything that this article, and most of the replies, aren't.
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Wait... they're using private funds for this? Somehow, that makes it even creepier.
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>>Wait... they're using private funds for this? Somehow, that makes it even creepier.
No, They set fake police foundation and channeled money under the radar of city council.
That is clear wire fraud by Kelly.
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Please look back in the mirror and repeat that sentence out loud.
Realize that everything you said equally applies to you. You sound as arrogant and stupid as you are claiming others are.
Private funds? What private source of money does the NYPD, a public insitution, have? What goods and services does it sell to generate this revenue?
Keep in mind that NYC has over 8 million people, over 35,000 NYPD officers, an annual budget of 61 billion dollars (which is balanced, by the way), and the city government as a whole employs 325,000 people (more than all but three US state governments).
How humble of you to point all of that out.
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Second, why would the NYPD be there at all if they aren't competing with the federal and local agencies whose jurisdiction and role it falls under to investigate? Sounds like a loser's excuse when they come in last to claim that they "weren't competing".
Third, if you have no official role in the investigation then you don't have an official reason to be there outside your jurisdiction. The local authorities and the FBI (when invited to assist) have an official reason to investigate and it is the journalists/reporters job to report what is found. If you don't like what they do or do not report to you and when, tough shit. Would you have welcomed Kenyan police into NYC to gather information on the attacks at the World Trade Center? Can I send my local police department to gather information on every high profile crime in NYC?
Fourth, you may actually want to read and research the articles before commenting as it quite plainly states:
This quite plainly "directly contradicts" the NYPD report you quoted that claims it is unknown whether they escaped or were killed and that there was a failure to secure the perimeter. One could say that it takes a special kind of stupidity to fail to understand that.
Fifth, if you're going to write comments larded with poorly examined opinions and absurd mischaracterizations, at least do some basic research. Crap like this just wastes our time.
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Second, reread my comment. NYPD is there to collect and rapidly communicate information that may be useful in preparing for, or preventing, a terrorist attack within NYC. They may not want to wait for the FBI to compile their own report and send it; they may devote more space/time to certain subjects than the FBI; and they may have analysis that the FBI won't, e.g. an analysis of how NYPD's current plans would have fared against a recent terrorist attack.
Third, NYPD isn't breaking any laws by traveling to these sites and gathering information. They're looking for information just as a journalist would. Jurisdiction has nothing to do with this. They're not wandering around trying to arrest people.
Fourth, you're still not reading carefully. The NYPD report states based on publicly available information that it is unknown whether the attackers were killed or escaped. The article claims that NYPD report asserts that the attackers most likely escaped; the article is wrong.
Fifth, take a breath and read more carefully before you respond. Your arguments were off-target and your questions were already answered.
Sixth, to those who are confused as to how the International Liason Program is funded, just google "NYPD International Liason Program."
Seventh, Chicago and LA police departments also have or had overseas programs, and Boston PD is now starting one. So do police departments in major cities across the world. What NYPD is doing isn't unusual or illegal; learning from the experience of others is a good thing, since experience can be a cruel teacher.
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I did that. Here is the result: The New York City Police Foundation, through contributions from its business, individual and philanthropic partners provides essential travel, lodging, and office expenses that fall outside the city’s budgetary lines.
According to Wikipedia: The New York City Police Foundation was established in 1971 by business and civic leaders as an independent, non-profit organization to strengthen the services of the New York City Police Department and to improve public safety in New York City .
How using the money to send police officers well outside of the NYPD's jurisdiction is supposed to improve public safety in New York, I don't know, especially when you consider the fact that how American local governments often respond to threats makes citizens feel less safe rather than more so.
"US Anti-Terrorism Strategies: making you scared so the terrorists don't have to."
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