Another Idiot with a Giant EGO

From the Tuesday Morning Quarterback article at ESPN.com on Dec. 17, 2013.

Wasteful Spending on Bodyguards Watch: Reader Terrance Stanton of Oak Park, Ill., notes this report, by Murray Weiss of DNAinfoNewYork, that outgoing NYC police commissioner Ray Kelly will get a 10-person NYPD security detail after he leaves office. Cost to taxpayers: $1.5 million per year. Weiss writes, "The detail will include a lieutenant, three sergeants and six detectives to chauffeur and protect Kelly and his family around-the-clock in the Big Apple and even out of town… Kelly has made himself the face of fighting crime and terrorism in the Big Apple, and has argued he's a target of threats, in need of continuing protection."

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AP Photo/Frank Franklin IIIf Ray Kelly made New York City safe, why does he personally need a phalanx of taxpayer-subsidized bodyguards?

If Kelly or his family actually has received any credible criminal threats, the NYPD should investigate them. Perhaps instead Kelly is claiming "threats" in quotation marks to justify a lavish ego-feeding perk. As for terrorists, George W. Bush's National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States concluded that no specific American individual has ever been targeted by terrorists, whose aim has always been the public. For Kelly to say he needs protection against terrorists is transparent nonsense. The worst that has happened to him because of his office was bad manners by spoiled students at Brown University.

Most likely what Kelly will use the multimillion-dollar security detail for is to cut to the heads of lines, speed through Manhattan with sirens on, double-park and generally treat himself like visiting royalty. A man surrounded by police officers isn't safe on the subway, he needs a driver too! Note he has a lieutenant in his detail: the lieutenant's job likely will be to pull rank and demand special treatment for Kelly. Kelly's family gets a security detail, so his wife and children can cut to the front, double-park and act important -- the retired commissioner's wife will have more bodyguards than the president of Uruguay. Have family members of a retired New York City police commissioner ever been targeted by criminals trying to retaliate against that commissioner? Should Kelly sign with a lecture agency and start making high-paid corporate speeches, he will strut in surrounded by security as if he were a head of state, pocket the fee, then hand taxpayers the bill for his self-promotion.

A former police commissioner of any city should have a "uniform" by his side when he makes a public appearance; a $1.5 million detachment of personal handservants is another matter. Kelly has been bragging relentlessly about declining crime rate in New York City. If crime is down, why does he need the largest security detail ever for a former commissioner? The reason is not what he claims, that's for sure.