New York police commissioner Raymond Kelly on Sunday defended the decision by local authorities to increase security on the city's subway system, despite skepticism among federal agencies over the seriousness of the threat.
Asked on the Fox News Sunday television program about reports the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation had doubts about the credibility of the threat, Kelly said New York authorities "have a responsibility to the 8.1 million people that live in this city.
"We have 4.7 million transit riders a day here in New York city," Kelly said.
"We're in a city that's been attacked twice successfully by terrorists, almost 3,000 people killed here four years ago (on September 11), so we might have a different set of priorities than other folks.
"We have to react immediately when we get very specific information," the police chief said. "We can't wait for absolute certitude. We did in my judgement precisely what we should have done.
"If we had a similar set of facts coming down the pike, we'd do exactly the same thing."
Kelly said the authorities had increased the number of police officers on the subway, were conducting more bag searches and have boosted the use of bomb-sniffing dogs.
"We've done quite a bit. And we're continuing to do that until we have a level of comfort that the threat has been reduced," he said.
"Operations are going on overseas that we believe will give us a better sense of the credibility of this threat in the short term," Kelly added. "So we'll be governed to a large extent as to what comes to us from the intelligence community overseas."
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