Although there has never been an allegation of improper activity, the posting of New York Police Department officers in foreign countries to combat terrorism poses complex questions that the City Council has yet to address, according to several Council members.
In the six and a half years since Sept. 11, the NYPD has led the effort to protect the residents of the city from more terrorist attacks. Department officers have helped fill a void left by ineffective federal agencies, several local national security experts said.
To defend the city, the department created the Counterterrorism Bureau in 2002, which develops security policies and implements public actions such as surges to sensitive locations and bomb detection checkpoints in the subways.
At the same time, the department expanded the NYPD Intelligence Division.
In 2002, it launched the small but high-profile International Liaison Program, as part of the Intelligence Division. Currently, 10 officers are liaisons to police departments and intelligence agencies around the world. Their posting overseas allowed them to arrive quickly following attacks such as the Madrid and London subway bombings.
The City Council Public Safety Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Police Department, has never held oversight hearings on the foreign postings, Committee chair Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens) said.
He acknowledged that he does not have the security clearance to view classified material, and he was not sure the Council had the capability to competently review such police activities.
“The City Council does not have any real expertise in that area to conduct meaningful oversight. Perhaps some other system needs to be established,” he said. “We should have oversight. That is what our forefathers envisioned when they came up with checks and balances. There is no way to perform an effective check if we weren’t actually aware of what is happening.”
The overseas officers are part of a vigorous effort by the NYPD to provide a measure of its own security, despite federal agents from the FBI, CIA and other agencies doing similar liaison work overseas.
Jerome Skolnick, co-director of the Center For Research in Crime and Justice at NYU Law School, explained the reasoning.
“The federal intelligence agencies did not prevent two major terrorist attacks in the City of New York on the World Trade Center,” he said.
NYPD officers are stationed in London, Madrid, Paris, Tel Aviv, Santo Domingo, Toronto, Montreal, Singapore, Amman and Lyon, where Interpol is headquartered, police officials said.
Their mission is to gather information from local law enforcement agencies that can then be used to prevent attacks here, uncover terrorists or their supporters here and develop information on terrorists’ tactics, officials have said.
However, they do not conduct investigations or gather raw intelligence, police spokesman Paul J. Browne wrote in an email.
In addition, NYPD detectives covered the March 2004 train bombing in Madrid, the July 2005 subway attacks in London and the July 2006 bombing of a train in Mumbai, India. This information is then used to help shape police tactics back in New York.
“The intelligence about how and where the Madrid bombs were assembled influenced how the NYPD patrolled the New York City’s mass transit system in the immediate aftermath of the attacks,” Browne wrote, as an example of how the information is used.
Council Member Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens), a member of the Public Safety Committee and a former police officer himself, said hearings or a subcommittee should be formed, but would have to take into consideration the confidential nature of the police work.
“There are issues of national security or local security... some of which are sensitive,” he said. “We need to balance the need for oversight without jeopardizing ongoing [operations].”
Some law-enforcement experts and City Council members said there were some complex legal issues raised in the overseas deployments, though they were unsure of where these would be addressed.
A spokesman for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services said that he was unaware of anyone outside the police department on the city payroll working overseas.
Joseph King, a professor at the John Jay College For Criminal Justice, and a former Department of Homeland Security official, said he did not consider the question of oversight of the liaison officers very pressing.
“I don't see it as a real issue,” he said, confident the police were training their officers to avoid potential problems and providing internal oversight in the department.
But he asked what kind of oversight there was for the overseas officers’ expenses, which are paid for by the private New York City Police Foundation. Several American cities have such organizations to support police programs the cities do not fund.
“Does the New York City Council have oversight over those funds?” King said.
Council Member Joseph Addabbo (D-Queens), chair of the Civil Service and Labor Committee, said he too would consider holding hearings for the good of the city and for the good of the officers.
“I personally think the general public should understand how we interact with our neighbors overseas. If we have NYPD officers overseas,” Addabbo said, “what jurisdiction are we under and what protects the city personnel?”