San Francisco Opts Out of FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Defiance of Trump

By Michelle Toomey
March 6, 2017 at 4:28pm

San Francisco just prioritized politics over the safety of its citizens, as it pulled out of an anti-terrorism task force.

The California city is no longer a part of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the decision served as a statement to the federal government after President Donald Trump threatened to pull federal funding for cities that refused to drop their “sanctuary city” status.

Fox News reported that the decision put innocent lives at risk — since 2001, the task force has foiled 93 Islamist terrorist attacks, including 12 in 2017 alone.

Mark Rossini, a retired FBI special agent and founding executive of the National Counterterrorism Center, said the decision was baseless.

“In my opinion, the decision by the mayor and the police chief to withdraw the San Francisco Police Department from the JTTF is really narrow-minded,” he stated. “Politics aside, and the mayor and leaders of San Francisco have their right to their opinion, political opinion and beliefs. But when you’re working in law enforcement, law enforcement should know no politics.”

Likewise, Claude Arnold, a former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations said the decision boded ill for San Francisco residents.

“There is less chance of uncovering networks, plots, missing pieces of a puzzle, without cities participating in the JTTF,” Arnold explained.

According to KGO-TV, San Francisco had a 10-year agreement with the FBI that expired this month.

But civil liberties advocates don’t believe there’s ever any need to work with the feds when it comes to anti-terrorism.

Attorney and civil rights advocate John Crew said that President Trump’s temporary travel ban from seven countries also played a role in the decision to cut ties with the FBI.

“Donald Trump made very clear that he was going to be targeting Muslims and he wants mass Muslim surveillance and part of the work done with the JTTF could feed into this horrible Muslim registry they’re talking about,” he noted.

H/T WZ

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