NYPD needs to step up counter terrorism efforts: Bill Bratton

With the NYPD ordering all officers to report in uniform Friday because of potential unrest stemming from the war in Israel, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton slammed the New York City Council for anti-police sentiment that’s meant a drop in the number of cops.

This comes as the former leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, called on Muslims to stage global demonstrations in support of Palestinians Friday.

Bratton told The Post that the NYPD is down about 3,000 to 4,000 officers since he left the top job in 2016.

“The department is down to about 33,000 officers,” he said. “During my time we were able to grow the department to about 36,000 or 37,000. This is coming at a time where potential threats around the world and the threat to the United State have increased exponentially.”

Critically, the NYPD’s two units that specialize in counterterrorism — the Critical Response Command (CRC) and the Strategic Response Group (SRG) — are down officers and there have been reports the CRC could be cut by at least 75%.

“They both have primary missions: CRC is focused on protecting against terrorist-related types of attacks and SRG is trained to deal with crowd-control demonstrations,” Bratton said. “Both have been reduced significantly in size.”

Bratton, who was the city’s top cop for two terms, in 1994 to 1996 and 2014 to 2016, blames the decline in cops squarely on the City Council.

“The city budget this year did not request additional officers because, I believe, they understood that the City Council would not have approved with their anti-police attitude,” Bratton said.

“So right now you have a significantly understaffed police force that’s being overworked and required to work extraordinary amounts of overtime. Ironically, the City Council is upset about the high overtime in the NYPD but that’s because they refuse to to hire more officers.”

The NYPD told all officers to report in uniform starting Friday in anticipation of potential unrest.

“All uniformed members of the service in every rank, will perform duty in the uniform of the day and be prepared for deployment,” read a Wednesday memo sent to all NYPD members.

Cops will not be granted excusals or shift changes and the order will remain in effect “until further notice,” according to the memo.

Last month, The Post reported that a unit in the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau trained to respond quickly to “the most highly organized and heavily armed attacks” could be slashed by as much as 75%.

Members of the NYPD’s Critical Response Command — described as one of its “first lines of defense against a terrorist-related attack” — were warned about the possible personnel shake-up in an internal memo in mid-September.

“Today, I was informed that our unit will be downsized significantly, by up to 75%,” Deputy Chief Scott Shanley, commanding officer of the unit, wrote in the memo, obtained by The Post.

The unit, described by the NYPD as “a permanent cadre of hand-selected police officers devoted to counterterrorism,” began eight years ago with 500 cops and supervisors, sources said. 

The officers are dispatched to high-profile events in the five boroughs, including the US Open and other sporting games; New Year’s Eve in Times Square; the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting; the West Village Halloween parade; Fleet Week, and any occasion when the president or dignitaries visit.

Bratton said the CRC and SRG units, which he launched in 2015, have never been more crucial than they are now.

“Each of those entities would have 600 highly-trained officers, all specially equipped with the long guns, the helmets, the heavy shields — they are the elite units trained to deal with counterterrorism,” Bratton told The Post.” “They’re the ones you see in front of synagogues and the UN.”

Bratton said the NYPD is still a very strong organization and he believes it’s well-equipped to handle terrorism, but warns that the department needs more staffing.

“We’re still most worried about the increased potential for the lone-wolf terrorist but there’s also the potential growth of terrorism from the Islamic terrorist community, whether it’s al Qaeda-, Isis-, Hamas- or Hezbollah-inspired,” Bratton said. “Unfortunately, the department has fewer resources than it did a few years ago.”

“What he’s saying is pretty much in line with what members of the [NYPD] law enforcement community believe,” a highly-placed source at the NYPD told The Post. “He’s not wrong.”

“While recent events outside of the [NYPD} continue to present challenges to recruitment efforts, we continue to focus on the positive results that happen when someone joins this organization,” an NYPD spokesperson told The Post. “Year to date 2023 we have hired more than 1400 individuals in addition to the approximately 2000 individuals we hired in 2022.”