Police Commissioner Kelly responded to reports that the New York City Police Department labels entire mosques "terrorist" organizations, dodging the direct question on Morning Joe and suggesting the reporters' work to be “fiction.”
New York City’s top cop, Ray Kelly, spoke out against reports that the city’s police designate entire mosques as terrorist organizations, and suggested the report is false.
News broke Wednesday that the New York Police Department has dubbed a dozen mosques as terrorist organizations, putting every person who walks through the doors “fair game” for surveillance, the AP reported. These practices are often done without evidence of criminal wrongdoing, the report said. The two reporters, Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, have a book on the department’s anti-terror policies, ”Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden’s Final Plot Against America,” coming out next week.
Kelly dodged the specific question on Morning Joe, saying their work had been authorized by law. He suggested the reporters’ work to be “fiction.”
“I haven’t seen the story, but they’re hyping a book that’s coming out next week,” Kelly said on Wednesday’s Morning Joe. “If it’s a reflection of the article, then the book will be a fair amount of fiction, it will be half-truths, it will be lots of quotes from unnamed sources. Our sin is to have the temerity and hutzpah to go into the federal government’s territory to go into counterterrorism and trying to protect this city by supplementing what the federal government has done.”
Watch the full interview here.
