At the New York Review of Books, Michael Greenberg discusses some of the near-endless violations of civil liberties that occur in the New York City of Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, focusing on the NYPD’s “Intelligence Division” in particular. Mike saves his “nut graph” for last.
David Cohen, the head of the Intelligence Division, appears to have assembled a kind of municipal CIA—an NYCIA, if you will. The full extent of its activities, and the cost to civil liberties, will probably not be revealed for many years, if they are ever fully known at all. By then, the damage may be irreversible. And yet it is far from clear whether any innocent lives will have been saved.
I believe it was Jimmy Breslin who described Rudy Giuliani as a short man in search of a balcony. Mike Bloomberg appears to be a short man who has found a club. If only Sharon Stone had sat on his face,* really hard, and for a really long period of time.
*Mike once volunteered that this would be his dream date.
