New York City police officials aren’t buying Sen. Ted Cruz’s bid to defend his widely condemned call to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods by claiming the city successfully used a similar program.
“Patrol and secure was a subtext for occupy and intimidate,” John Miller, NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said during an interview on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” in a reference to Cruz’s remarks.
New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton blasted Cruz’s claims Saturday, saying he takes “great offense” at Cruz’s claims.
“We already patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods, the same way we patrol and secure other neighborhoods,” Bratton wrote in a New York Daily News op-ed.
“We do not single out any populace, black, white, yellow or brown for selective enforcement,” he said. “We do not ‘patrol and secure’ neighborhoods based on selective enforcement because of race or religion, nor will we use the police and an occupying force to intimidate a populace or a religion to appease the provocative chatter of politicians seeking to exploit fear.”
Miller on Sunday cited the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, and torture of terror suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, as failures the country should not repeat.
“These are things that on reflection through history, the American people have rejected and each one of those is driven by fear,” Miller said.
Speaking earlier on “Fox News Sunday” Cruz, a lawyer and former Supreme Court clerk, did not explicitly argue his proposal to target Muslim neighborhoods would be constitutional. Nor did Cruz cite examples of terrorism in the United States carried out by citizens living in local Muslim communities.
He argued instead that the federal government should preemptively combat what he fears is a growing risk that Muslim neighborhoods in the United States could, like neighborhoods in European cities, become a source of terror.
“What this looks like is proactive law enforcement,” Cruz said.
“We can’t become Europe,” he said.
Cruz cited as a positive example a controversial program in which New York police agents after Sept. 11, engaged in secret surveillance and monitoring of mosques and Muslim-owned business. Cruz described the clandestine program as voluntary, a claim contradicted by multiple federal lawsuits filed by New York City Muslims who said they were monitored against their will and without any evidence they supported criminal action.
Cruz faulted New York’s current mayor, Bill de Blasio, who hired Bratton and Miller, for ending the program.
Cruz’s policing plan has been denounced by President Obama, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and members of both parties.
Cruz’s claims drew criticism Sunday from a fellow Texas Republican, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul. McCaul said the senator ignores differences between Muslim communities in the United States and those in Europe.
“In Europe it’s very segregated, and you have the diasporas in Belgium that I saw,” McCaul said. “And they’re being radicalized because they’re not assimilated with the culture. I don’t think we have that same situation in the United States.”
“To send inflammatory messages could actually have an unintended consequence,” McCaul said.
