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03Apr16

NYPD Commissioner Bratton says President Obama's call to cut counter-terror funding is 'mind boggling'

The NYPD's top cop renewed criticism over President Obama's "mind boggling" proposal to slash federal counter-terror funding by 50% during a radio show interview Sunday morning.

"That's the kind of foolishness that goes on down there (in Washington)," Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said of the president's bid to slash funding during an appearance on John Catsimatidis' "The Cats Roundtable" on AM 970.

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Later that morning on CNN's Global Public Square with Fareed Zakaria, the NYPD's lead counter-terror official detailed some of the ways those funds are used.

John Miller, the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counter-terrorism, said the department has sent representatives to terrorist attack sites all over the world to see what useful information and tactics it could glean from the wreckage.

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"We went to Paris, we went to Sydney, we went to Tunisia and we studied the attacks in details and we asked the authorities to teach us what they learned," Miller said.

"We took their lessons and we put them into effect here."

Miller also noted that the department has ballooned the number of officers trained in special weapons and tactics from just five to 1800. Those elite trained units that are critical to responding to active terror threats -- especially in incidents involving several sites at once, as in the most recent attacks in Paris and Brussels, Miller said.

Bratton also continued his roast over the GOP hopeful Ted Cruz for his suggestion to "patrol and secure Muslim communities."

"Senator Cruz was very anti-American, anti-Muslim in some of his comments," Bratton said.

"I took Mr. Cruz's remarks as a denigration, not only of a religion, of a people, but of my police officers and civilian employees in this department."

Bratton roasted Cruz in an op-ed that ran in the Daily News last week, calling him a fearmonger and ignorant when it comes to fighting terrorism.

Asked by Zakaria if the NYPD received any blowback from the sharp criticism it leveled against Cruz, Miller said simply, "Not a single bit, Fareed."

[Source: By Ryan Sit, NY Daily News, NY, 03Apr16]
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