Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t see eye to eye with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on how much information New Jersey is getting from the New York City Police Department.
Yesterday, Governor Christie indicated his state was receiving very little information. “9/11 was not prevented because law enforcement agencies weren’t talking to each other, they were being selfish, they were being provincial, they were being paranoid, they were being arrogant,” he warned. “I do not want to return to those days.”
While on John Gambling’s radio show this morning, Mr. Bloomberg was asked if he was surprised by Mr. Christie’s or Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s criticisms of the NYPD’s controversial surveillance of the Garden State’s Muslim community in particular.
“Well, I haven’t talked to either one about it,” Mr. Bloobmerg began. “We have an agreement with the State of New Jersey, signed I think by Governor Codey, in terms of helping them — because it’s a regional problem — prevent terrorism.”
“And also, in the case of, I think it’s Newark, they’ve assigned one of their police officers to work with the NYPD. So we’ve certainly been keeping them informed,” he added, soon repeating again that “we share the information with New Jersey.”
Mr. Bloomberg concluded by saying the focus shouldn’t be on the disagreements between himself and the New Jersey officials.
“What we’ve got to do is just work together. We’ll do as good of a job as we can to keep everbody informed. Sometimes there’s nothing to inform them, sometimes you inform people and they don’t listen,” he said. “I think we should find things the things we can work together [on] with Governor Christie and Mayor Booker rather than spend our time trying to find differences.”
