And While The City Lays Off Educators . . .

The NYPD Counter-Terrorism Unit, roughly modeled on television’s 24 and, well, kind of weird, is now under the microscope:

[An AP report] says the program to infiltrate Muslim communities was started by CIA veteran David Cohen, who was tapped in 2002 by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who thought 9/11 proved the NYPD couldn’t rely on the feds to protect the city from terrorists.

Cohen created a mini-CIA inside the NYPD, with spies and analysts and an international scope.

The NYPD has a big advantage over the CIA: a diverse pool of officers who could pass in any community in the city.

Undercover officers called “rakers” went to hang out in bookstores, hookah bars and cafes, the AP said — an allegation the NYPD fiercely denied.

After lawyers in the department said it might appear that police were building dossiers on innocent people, the cops began regularly shredding documents discussing “rakers,” the story said.

Earlier: NYPD CTU, Now More Than Ever; And NYPD CTU — Just So We’re Clear, This Totally Doesn’t Count As A “Foiled Terrorist Plot”; Talk Of Budget Cuts Leads To Inevitable NYPD CTU Puff Piece.

Less “Thought Provoking” Than Just “Provoking”

People need to learn that art that resembles improvised explosives is never cool, and not only because of recent events:

Barely 24 hours after the Times Square terror scare, firefighters used a crowbar to break into a Flatiron District storefront after a passerby reported what looked like bombs set to explode.

But the Sunday evening fuss was over an art display that included a fog machine, a fake time bomb, and some vials of stinky perfume in containers that looked like little pipe bombs.

The NYPD bomb squad was called in to make sure the display at 1133 Broadway was safe, and firefighters turned off the fog machine to make sure no more passersby would think the artwork was about to explode.

Goldman Sachs Nearly Caused 5/1

It turns out that the would-be car bomber’s home was in foreclosure:

Court records show that the suspect in the failed Times Square bombing defaulted on a $200,000 mortgage on his Connecticut home and that the property is in foreclosure.

Records obtained by The Associated Press show that Chase Home Finance LLC sued Shahzad in September to foreclose on the home in Shelton.

The foreclosure records show Shahzad took out the mortgage on the property in 2004, and he co-owned the home with a woman named Huma Mian. The foreclosure case is pending in Milford Superior Court.

A message was left Tuesday with an attorney for Chase’s law firm. The records show Shahzad and Mian didn’t have lawyers for the case.

Now That The Storyline Is Intact, We Can Make It Look Like 24 Again

Now that it’s clear that the mayor was wrong (and our apologies to the governor for doubting his national security intelligence credentials), and that this was Full-Fledged Terrorism With International Links!, it’s important to raise the stakes again — try freaking the fuck out of everyone for no fucking reason, to start:

The car bomb planted in Times Square came within a “millisecond” of causing “mass casualties” with a 30-foot high fireball, an explosives expert said.

Kevin Barry, a retired NYPD bomb squad supervisor and the head of the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators, painted a gruesome picture of what might have been if the bomb had gone off Saturday night.

“Several hundred” could have been killed or maimed by a fireball exploding from the Nissan Pathfinder found loaded down with firecrackers, fertilizer, gasoline, propane and alarm clocks.

A “millisecond”?

If This Had Been 24, You Would Have Had To Wait Until Netflix Delivered The Second Disc Before The President Even Found Out About The Threat

As we suspected, the timeline for the Times Square Car Bomb was a little . . . extended, as the Daily News shows:

6:28 p.m.: Video surveillance camera records the Nissan Pathfinder driving west on 45th St.

6:34 p.m.: Times Square street vendor notices the suspicious vehicle and flags down Officer Wayne Rhatigan, who is patrolling on horse. Rhatigan calls in a report of a car fire, and flags down additional officers.

6:40 p.m.: Engine 54 and Ladder 4 is the first FDNY unit to respond.

Approximately 6:47: Bomb squad arrives, cops begin evacuating Times Square.

7 p.m.: Commissioner Raymond Kelly, attending White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington with Mayor Bloomberg, first learns of the incident.

8 p.m.: Kelly tells Bloomberg of the incident.

8:30 p.m.: Many Broadway shows, including hits “The Lion King,” “Next to Normal” and “Come Fly Away” start late.

9 p.m.: The Marriott Marquis, across the street from the car bomb, begins evacuating guests from its south tower.

10:40 p.m.: Kelly fully debriefs Bloomberg as the dinner ends. They decide to return to New York immediately.

10:45 p.m.: President Obama is notified of the situation.

11 p.m.: Bloomberg and girlfriend Diana Taylor leave correspondents dinner. They get in an SUV and head for the airport, where they board one of the mayor’s two private French-made tri-engine Dassault Falcon 900 jets. Kelly soon joins him.

11:30 p.m.: Bomb is considered dismantled by NYPD. Broadway shows begin letting out. Some shows direct theatergoers out back alley exits. Theatergoers at “God of Carnage” are held from leaving for 15 minutes.

So had this been a real terrorist attack, the timeline might go like this:

6:28 p.m.: Video surveillance camera records the Nissan Pathfinder driving west on 45th St.

6:29 p.m.: Since video surveillance does little to actually prevent crime versus merely helping investigators afterward understand what happened, a vendor and hundreds others on the street are killed by a massive car bomb.

6:34 p.m.: Shit goes bananas and people start really freaking out.

7 p.m.: Commissioner Raymond Kelly, attending White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington with Mayor Bloomberg, first learns of the incident, but neither can really do much since they’re stuck like three hours away in D.C.

8 p.m.: Hopefully Broadway theaters extend their customary five to ten minute delay to accommodate stragglers and latecomers.