They say it like it is a bad thing |
(cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com) Mike Groll/Associated PressThe mayor on Tuesday. ALBANY – Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Tuesday that whoever decided to show a film depicting American Muslims as extremists to nearly 1,500 city police officers “exercised some terrible judgment.”
Mr. Bloomberg said that neither he nor the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, had known at the time that the film, “The Third Jihad,” was being shown to officers. Speaking to reporters after testifying here at a state budget hearing, Mr. Bloomberg said that the film had not been shown at the Police Academy.
“It was done someplace else and as soon as they found out about it they stopped it and took it down,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Somebody exercised some terrible judgment. I don’t know who. We’ll find out.”
When the screening of the film for some officers was first revealed last year by Tom Robbins of The Village Voice, the Police Department’s main spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said it had been screened “a couple of times.”But an article in The New York Times Tuesday, based on documents received by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School through a Freedom of Information request, showed that it had been shown repeatedly for at least three months.
The film says that few Muslim leaders can be trusted. It also includes an interview with Mr. Kelly, which, Mr. Browne said, had been lifted from old footage.
