VIGILANCE

Ex-Attorney Gen. Defends NYPD

From charges of entrapment in terror arrest.

Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey thinks everyone’s being too harsh on the New York Police Department. The Intelligence Division of Ray Kelly’s force has been accused of improprieties in the Nov. 19 arrest of Jose Pimentel, the "lone wolf" terror suspect nabbed for constructing a bomb. A series of Associated Press articles faulted the intel team for alleged racial profiling, and the FBI was also seen distancing itself from the case over suggestions that the NYPD had entrapped Pimentel. But Mukasey noted that Pimentel had two years of involvement in jihad-related activities, and the entrapment charge seems farfetched. He also noted that sniping from federal bodies like the FBI pointed to a healthy competition between law-enforcement agencies, like trash talk. "New Yorkers are safer as a result," Mukasey said.