Unique team within NYPD protects New Yorkers from around the globe

TEL AVIV (WABC) — The dangers happening around the world can happen to New Yorkers – which is the driving mission behind a unique team within the NYPD.

They may be part of the NYPD, but these detectives are spread across the globe for a very important reason.

You might take the cop out of New York, but you’ll never take the New York out of Charlie Benaim.

“Everything that happens here in Israel has the potential to impact things in New York City,” Benaim said.

The veteran New York City detective is the NYPD’s eyes and ears in a region that’s on fire.

His office could be any squad room in Brooklyn, but for years, from an Israeli police station near Tel Aviv, Benaim’s been feeding an endless stream of information, in real time, to his bosses back at One Police Plaza.

And that was before Oct. 7 when mobs of terrorists invaded the country – murdering more than 1,000, kidnapping more than 200 and making Benaim’s job more crucial than ever.

“Asking the New York question, when something is happening, what would it look like it if it were to happen in New York City, and more importantly than that, how do you prevent it?” said Rebecca Weiner.

Weiner is the deputy commissioner of counterterrorism for the NYPD. Benaim is just one of a team of detectives that report to her from 15 cities around the world.

After all, for New Yorkers, police say, everything is local.

“It can be homicides and gangs, it can be transnational crime, it can be the far right, it can be al Qaeda, it can be Iran, you name the threat, whatever is bubbling up overseas may have an impact on our city,” Weiner said.

Like so many things, the so-called police liaison program has its roots in the wreckage of 9/11 when famously American intelligence services failed to connect the dots and prevent the attack.

The NYPD determined it needed its own presence overseas and the program was born.

The cost of travel and housing is covered by the nonprofit Police Foundation, so officers like Benaim can get information from the people who have it to the people who need it.

After an attack drone launched by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels exploded in Tel Aviv last month, killing one man in his sleep.

Josh Einiger tagged along as Benaim investigated a troubling phenomenon: lethal drones launched from hundreds of miles away and able to outsmart even Israel’s Iron Dome.

Benaim was raised in Israel in the turbulent 1970s. He served in the IDF in Gaza and Lebanon before emigrating to American and becoming a New York City cop.

He worked in narcotics in Harlem before being tapped for the assignment that would change his life and help protect New Yorkers’ lives from half a world away.

“What happens in one place may very quickly happen in another, and if we fail to keep up with what’s going on in the world, then we’re one step behind,” he said.

ALSO READ | From Tel Aviv to New York City, NYPD confronts threat of drone attacks

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