By Emily Ngo
Newsday
NEW YORK — NYPD officials will keep pressing Congress to more fully reimburse the cost of protecting President-elect Donald Trump in New York City, Police Deputy Commissioner John Miller said in an interview that aired Sunday, calling the operation an “unfunded federal mandate.”
The police department and New York’s elected officials had asked for $35 million in federal funds to pay for police officers, overtime and other resources involved in protecting Trump Tower during the transition period, but Congress is offering to reimburse the city just $7 million.
“We were disappointed in that, but we’ll be back and we’ll lay that problem out again,” Miller told WNYM/970 AM radio host John Catsimatidis. “We have to protect the president-elect and we’ll have to protect the president, but to ask the city to eat that cost for about three months isn’t fair.”
The NYPD have significantly beefed up its presence around the Manhattan tower that serves as Trump’s residence and transition offices. It also protects his motorcade in the city.
Miller, deputy commissioner of counterterrorism, said it’s difficult to estimate the cost beyond the Jan. 20 inauguration.
“Is he coming home every weekend? Is he stopping in on weeknights? Is he taking vacations here or is he going to get, as so many people do, pulled into the Washington cycle?” Miller asked.
Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said Thursday in response to a Newsday reporter’s question that they “really haven’t discussed his travel plans when he is not in the Oval Office,” but he does plan to live in Washington, D.C.
Miller was asked about Rep. Peter King’s suggestion to Trump during a meeting last week that the federal government use a program to surveil Muslims similar to the one launched under former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Miller said a report last fall by the NYPD inspector general determined the investigations were “properly predicated and properly carried out,” though some ran past deadline.
But the report also found the NYPD was “often noncompliant with a number of the rules governing the conduct” of the probes.
King confirmed to Newsday that he discussed mirroring Kelly’s effort to gather intelligence from mosques and other sources, saying it would help the Justice Department and the FBI prevent smaller-scale terror attacks.
Kelly’s program and King’s suggestion have been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups as bigoted and unconstitutional.
King, also a guest on Sunday’s “Cats Roundtable,” said on the show that he learned in the Trump Tower meeting that the president-elect is different in private than his public persona.
“He’s calm, he’s quiet, he’s restrained, he’s very thoughtful,” the congressman said. “He’s ready to hit the ground running. He’s very concerned about Islamist terrorism.”