The NYPD used to have a first-rate intelligence operation. It didn’t survive the De Blasio administration in good shape. The NYPD used to be able to break up terror plots before they happened much as the FBI does. But that required monitoring mosques, getting confidential informants and doing all the other things that CAIR, Linda Sarsour and the rest of the intersectional Islamists considered hate crimes.

Now, in the era of police defunding where the cops are the bad guys, I imagine NYPD intel is glad just to survive. I don’t know if Thomas Galati believes what he’s saying or is just saying what he needs to.

And, in the end, what difference does it make? An institution depends on people being willing to tell the truth. Plenty in the FBI knew the truth about Islamic terrorism. They just learned to keep their mouths shut. And now some conservatives are learning to keep their mouths shut because the movement is moving on. And whatever they know or don’t know, many others forget or never learn the truth in the first place.

“He knew what he was doing. He knew why he was doing it and he thought he would die in the attack,” Thomas Galati, the department’s chief of intelligence and counterterrorism, was quoted as having told ABC News in an interview. “He did yell out ‘Allahu Akbar.'”

“He is not representing, you know, the Islamic religion but rather, you know, a very, very small percentage of people that get radicalized,” Galati added.

The suspect, 19-year-old Trevor Bickford, faces charges of attempted murder of a police officer.

Galati has been at this for a while. He knows the truth, I suspect. But he also knows that his boss answers to assorted imams, that Linda Sarsour or the New York Times could have his job if he says the wrong thing.

So he speaks in that awkward manner that we first began to hear in the Bush administration, around ’03 or so when the whole idea of defeating the Jihad was traded in for bringing democracy to them instead.

A lot of seasoned officials are saying things, but what are they really saying?

Though the circumstances and law enforcement agencies were different, the problem and results are the same, said John Cohen, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security acting undersecretary for intelligence, and a former police officer and detective.

“It has become increasingly clear that the protocols used by federal and local authorities to assess the risk posed by individuals who exhibit threat-related behaviors is out of date and inconsistent with the current threat facing the nation,” said Cohen, an ABC News contributor.

“Yet again we have experienced a mass casualty attack by an individual who was known to law enforcement, who had exhibited the warning signs but was not subject to a threat management strategy. Unfortunately this has become an all too common occurrence and too many communities have suffered as a result,” Cohen said.

Cohen said traditional approaches to disrupting international terror plots do not seem to work when dealing with “ideologically motivated, domestic offenders.”

“How many mass casualty attacks need to occur before we change our approach to assessing and managing risk?” Cohen said.

What are those approaches?

The toolkit here is very limited. Law enforcement can strongly suspect that someone poses a threat, but they can’t follow him around all the time, indefinitely, for months or years. All they can do is try to entrap him using online agents or in-person CIs. If that fails, they have few options. With demographic growth and conversion in the case of Islam, and the growing number of random crazies who worship the Columbine shooters, we’re in the same situation as the Europeans with too many hostiles to track or keep track of.

Unless we deal with, what the Left likes to call, root causes, we’re screwed. And the root causes are politically incorrect.

All that’s left are more law enforcement powers that won’t get to the heart of the problem.