Soon after 9/11, law enforcement and national security officials identified the perpetrators of the deadliest terrorist attack in American history.
While Osama bin Laden, the attack’s architect, was killed in 2011 and al-Qaeda is now a shadow of its former self, New York faces no shortage of potential threats a quarter-century after September 11. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch recently said that New York City now confronts the most perilous threat environment that she has seen in her 18 years in government. “It’s an everything, everywhere all at once terrorist threat environment,” said Rebecca Weiner, the New York Police Department’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism.
Today, the threats are so wide-ranging, idiosyncratic, individualized, and unpredictable that they require an extensive and creative response—and not just from the NYPD. Protecting New York, which remains the world’s top terrorist target, increasingly requires coordination among federal homeland security agencies, some 18,000 state and local law-enforcement groups, and nonprofit organizations like the Community Security Initiative…