Cops Say Can't Rely on Feds to Fight Terrorism

Sept. 10, 2002 -- New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly believes last Sept. 11's terrorist attacks have forced him to look at his job in a very different way.

"We have to do everything we can to protect this city," Kelly told ABCNEWS. "We've been targeted here four times in the last decade, twice successfully. We don't want to be Ground Zero again."

The Bush administration has proposed a new Department of Homeland Security, which would attempt to coordinate the federal government's intelligence gathering with state and local law enforcement.

However, an increasing number of police departments in the country believe they can't afford to wait for a giant bureaucracy to be created — and have taken matters into their own hands.

Kelly hired Dave Cohen, the former deputy director of the CIA to run the NYPD's Intelligence Division. He also hired Frank LiButti, a retired three-star Marine Corps general to run a new Counterterrorism Division.

"In the aftermath of Sept. 11, we want to be able to gather our own information, to do analysis, to make certain New York has whatever leg up it can to prevent another attack," said Kelly.

Sending Detectives Overseas

So the NYPD is doing things no other American police department has done: posting detectives — some permanently — in half a dozen foreign countries to gather intelligence on terrorism. Kelly has also searched his departments for potential translators and undercover agents.

"And we have discovered that we have some very accomplished Arabic speakers, Pashtun speakers, Hindi, Urdu [speakers]," he said, "languages that are in demand these days."

In the past, this has been work American police departments counted on the CIA and the FBI to do. But since Sept. 11, police chiefs have decided they can do more.

"We work closely with the federal authorities, but we simply can't rely on that alone," Kelly said.

Baltimore Police Stopped Potential Terror Act

Other cities are reacting to Sept. 11 in similar ways.