Jenna: Good evening and welcome.

After 9/11, the and YPG -- the NYPD created a new counterterrorism unit to avert another attack.

The focus then was on international threats from groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.

However, since then, the threats facing New York have evolved now there is a growing focus on domestic terrorism, like the mass shooting in Buffalo last year for recent attacks on synagogues across the region.

Rebecca Weiner appointed as the Deputy Commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, the first woman to serve in that role.

She is a 17-year veteran of the NYPD.

She joins me to talk about the threat environment in New York City and what led her to a career in law enforcement.

Welcome.

>> Glad to be here.

First off.

What exactly is your role?

Deputy Commissioner Weiner: I oversee a Bureau that was created most nine a lesson -- post 9/11.

We had some resources exist to before, some we brought to the table after whose job it is to fight crime and protect people, events, and infrastructures the city.

It is to make New York City safe by preventing complex acts of violence, in particular those associated with terrorism.

Jenna: There has been a shift from concerns about international terrorism, which I do not want to minimize, but definitely toward right wing extremists, like the shooting in Buffalo.

How do you begin to address that when we are talking about acts that an individual who may have no record decides to get up one day and commit?

Deputy Commissioner Weiner: Excellent question.

I have been here for 17 years.

The threat environment has changed considerably over that time.

Like to describe it as a shift, which implies moving from one place to another.

Actually, what we are dealing with is a diversification of the threats we face.

We do not have as much of the complex, externally directed plotting that we had immediately post 9/11, but we still have a robust presence of individuals inspired by Al Qaeda, ISIS, that ideology.

The most recent example of that in New York City was New Year's Eve last year in Times Square, just outside.

An attack carried out against some of our officers by somebody motivated in part by that kind of ideology.

At the same time, over the last few years, we have seen them respond to a concerted increase in what you are just describing.

Others describe it with various acronyms but the label we use is racially and ethnically motivated extremism.

That encompasses not sees, white supremacist.

The Buffalo attack is an unfortunate and apropos reminder of what that threat can look like.

There was an attack recently in Jacksonville.

You have also seen the rise in antigovernment extremism and over targeting of individuals who are associated with or semblance of government.

We are seeing an increase in conspiracy theory-driven violence.

We had a mishap last spring on our subway system.

An individual shot 10 people on a subway train, motivated in part by least raised conspiracy theories.

The threat is broad, diverse, unpredictable.

However, the good news is the machinery we put into place in the post 9/11 era to mitigate it, which combines a deep understanding of what is happening on our streets, a granular knowledge, with intelligence that we are getting from partners, information from international partners, the private sector, open source analysis that you mentioned earlier paired with investigators working cases.

That is a combination they can mitigate a threat whatever the ideology.

It is a machine we built in a way that can be deployed as the threat environment shifts.

Jenna: I also want to bring up the fact that you are overseeing a division that a few years back, after 9/11, was criticized for the controversial way it monitor the Muslim community.

I am wondering what you think of those criticisms and how do you address that with yourself at the home now?

Jenna: -- Deputy Commissioner Weiner: It is another important point and an interesting history that we have -- as a city have gone through.

There are certain strengths that NYPD brings to counterterrorism.

In particular, the diversity of our own personnel is extraordinary.

We became a majority minority in 2006.

We speak dozens of languages as a department.

Our officers hail from all over the world and reflect the diversity of our city.

Tapping into that diversity is a strength and helping us understand what is signal, what is noise has been a key hallmark of our program.

Also, the domain knowledge.

Nobody understands the streets of the city better than the officers who patrol it.

Post 9/11, the NYPD had to adapt quickly to a new threat environment that we did not understand all that well at the time.

We learned a lot over a short period of time.

We learned about what a threat looks like here.

That learning process has some bumps along the road.

It was an incredibly important process as a Bureau, is a program.

Alongside our law enforcement partners as well, trying to make sure we are governed by a consent decree, which is probably not of great interest to your viewers accept lawyers among you that governs activity in this realm where political activity is at the root of some of the threats we are investigating.

This consent degree -- decree is incredibly important.

As part of the settlement of the losses, we had the appointment of a civilian representative, somebody from the outside who would look at our cases not from the perspective of a police officer charged with protecting the city, but to make sure that our sense of what was justified come appropriate, necessary for public safety was shared.

That has been an incredibly helpful addition to our team.

We also enshrined into policy certain practices we had been taking voluntarily as part of that summit.

Learned on the way.

The biggest take away is as we have shared the secret is that we need to keep a murder to keep the public safe with outside observers -- we need to take in order to keep the public safe with outside observers, some of them have been taken with the gravity of the threats we are dealing with.

The main take away for as is the importance of transparency, that the more you are able to communicate with the public, the safer we all are and the happier everybody is with the protection we are affording to civil-rights and civil liberties.

Jenna: I also want to dig into your personal story.

You are the first woman to hold this position.

I understand your grandfather actually left Poland under political strife in the 1930's.

He became a part of the Manhattan Project.

I and wondering how the influence of someone who saw a different set of challenges politically in his country affected the way you approach your job now.

Deputy Commissioner Weiner: My grandfather was living in what is now part of Ukraine.

He was a mathematician.

He did the with his family.

A couple numbers.

The others were killed.

It is a Jewish family.

We thought the Nazis and came to the U.S.

He married my grandmother, who was French.

They were early inhabitants of Los Altos during the wartime years.

My grandmother was newly pregnant with my mother at the time.

They went to work on the Manhattan project and state and worked on additional projects -- the development of the hydrogen bomb, mathematical applications at the root of the Monte Carlo method.

He very much believed in using the power of signs and intelligence come in that cognitive status, not the disciplinary sense, to affect national security and public safety outcomes.

Very different context, the feet -- fleeing the war, building the desert, working on this project in secrecy, but that commitment to Nationals to to public safety was a beauty in me and invite my parents growing up.

Unfortunately, he asked away when I was little but I was taken with the family history and how they chose to contribute , when it was they had to contribute, to a mission of vital importance at the time.

9/11 became another defining moment for me in my path to come to this field and department, but it was always with the background of wanting to use what I have to bring to this important site.

Jenna: We have a few seconds left but as the first woman to hold this position, what does that mean to you?

Deputy Commissioner Weiner: I feel extremely fortunate.

I have been helped by many, men and women.

To be able to pay it forward and encourage younger women who might think I do not know about policing our national security, during want to embark upon this and to say yes, you should is too honor -- is an incredible honor.

Jenna: We will leave it there but I would like to thank the deputy Commissioner for joining us.

We look forward to hopefully, perhaps, not hearing from you.

I do not know if it is good or bad news to speak.

But thank you for joining us on MetroFocus.

Deputy Commissioner Weiner: Thank you for having me.

Jenna: Absolutely.