Another New Year’s Eve celebration is safely behind us, with the festivities in Times Square peaceful and well-controlled. This is particularly notable in the wake of a holiday season marked by protests, division and fear. Bulletins from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security in December highlighted the continued risk of violence targeting large public gatherings on American soil, due to escalating tensions emanating from the Israel/Gaza war.
In an interview on MSNBC just before the Christmas break, the New York City Police Department’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism Rebecca Ulam Weiner described the steps the NYPD is taking to keep our city safe.
An important element of this preparedness, she noted, comes from the real-time intelligence provided by NYPD’s International Liaison Program (ILP) — and in this case from an investigator posted in Tel Aviv. That officer is one of a 16-person cadre of investigators embedded in key cities around the world. Unique among major municipal police departments, NYPD’s ILP is part of a robust anti-terrorism initiative designed to prevent, detect, and deter terrorist activities targeting New York City.
It is also a prime example of the way effective public/private partnerships can marshal private resources to leverage best-in-class public programs designed to keep our communities safe. In this case, the NYPD pays the salaries of the ILP officers deployed in the U.S., in Western Europe, around the Middle East and elsewhere. But the city is not permitted to pay living expenses for its officers, so it’s private philanthropy that pays those expenses.
Since 2008, we’ve had the privilege of leading an ongoing challenge grant to help the New York City Police Foundation fund this effort. We’ve been joined by a number of other philanthropists in covering the costs of lodging, transportation, household expenses, communications costs, and other incidentals for these key investigators in their outposts.
Through a succession of police commissioners since the program’s inception, the NYPD and private sector donors have remained firmly committed to ILP because that program could not exist without private funding.
Programs like ILP must be protected for good reason — especially in times of budget crisis. Consider the following: the same year we became involved with ILP, hotels and a religious center in Mumbai were attacked by swarms of terrorists arriving by boat. The NYPD liaison posted in Amman quickly headed to the port city and provided a deep briefing to a packed auditorium back at NYPD headquarters.
The lessons learned from those attacks led to active shooter training for NYPD’s counterterrorism officers, specifically designed to protect against such attacks — which differ significantly from the suicide-bomb-style terrorist incidents that had become so prevalent in the 1990s and 2000s.
In 2019, during the horrific attacks against two mosques in New Zealand, New York’s international liaison in Sydney traveled to Christchurch to provide real time intelligence that helped inform the efforts of NYPD’s Racially and Ethnically Motivated Extremism (REME) unit.
More recently, a domestic liaison provided critical updates to the NYPD on the Jan. 6th attacks on the U.S. Capitol, which allowed the NYPD to harden New York City’s security apparatus in case such domestic terror might spread. And in other cases, NYPD’s international liaison officers have worked with local authorities worldwide on drug, gang, and terrorism investigations.
Today, liaisons posted in the Middle East are playing a crucial role in providing on-the-ground intelligence that has allowed NYPD to forestall terrorist attacks in New York.
We live in a global world. A program such as NYPD’s ILP program wasn’t needed in 1950 or 1970. It is a critical need now. And in a time of deep budget cuts, the private sector can — and should — help secure public safety. Private enterprise, after all, has reaped the benefits of globalization; we should also shoulder some of the responsibility.
This doesn’t mean that philanthropy and other forms of private funding should absolve government of its responsibilities. But it does have a role to play by supplementing government resources.
There is ample precedent for this, including parents’ associations that raise funds for public schools; business improvement districts (BIDs) that supplement municipal services; and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) partnerships that enhance national defense. In addition, private sector expertise can bring great benefit to the public sector through best practices, efficiency, and innovation.
We need an engaged citizenry to undergird counterterrorism efforts, and this includes those business and private foundations at the heart of our city’s greatness. Private philanthropy is a critical part of that engagement.
Milstein is New York-based business, philanthropic and civic leader who has supported the New York City Police Foundation for decades.
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