Police Intelligence Chief Is Honored by the ADL
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Anti-Defamation League yesterday honored the NYPD’s commissioner of Intelligence, David Cohen, as the first recipient of an award named after an Italian police chief who saved more than 3,500 lives during the Holocaust. The police chief of Fiurme, Giovanni Palatucci, forged documents and visas that allowed thousands of Jews to escape death in concentration camps during World War II. He was eventually caught and died in the Dachau concentration camp in 1944.
As he received the award, Mr. Cohen compared Fiurme to New York City, noting that Jews from throughout Central Europe had flocked to the Italian city seeking refuge, much like the millions of immigrants who come today.
“Like Fiurme, New York City stands like a beacon to them,” he said. “By contrast, those who attacked us on September 11 do not like what this city stands for.”
Mr. Cohen, a 35-year veteran of the CIA, is the first NYPD intelligence chief, a role created following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The president of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, said Mr. Cohen had been chosen for the award because of his anti-terrorism efforts.
“Commissioner Cohen works against forces of hatred and extremism to make New York City safe for people of all backgrounds to live, work, and worship,” Mr. Foxman said at the awards ceremony yesterday at the Columbus Circle Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who also spoke, said Mr. Cohen, like Palatucci, fought for “freedom and human rights.”
He cited Mr. Cohen’s intelligence work during the 2004 Republican National Convention, saying the intelligence chief had prevented some protesters from creating disruptions so that others could protest peacefully.
Civil liberties groups are suing the NYPD, saying it infringed on the civil rights of protesters.
A former CIA director, George Tenet, also attended the event, along with Italy’s national police chief, Antonio Manganelli, who is from Fiurme.
The ceremony was held on the anniversary of an attack on Rome’s main synagogue in 1982, and Mr. Cohen noted the NYPD’s continued fight against anti-Semitism in New York following a spate of vandalism against synagogues in Brooklyn in recent weeks.
