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Chief William J Bratton is the topic of tonight's "Community Matters" radio talk show
Read how the press covered his decision to leave LAPD (below)
by Bill Murray - LAPD Chief William J. Bratton announced that he would be ending his service at the Department on October 31st, surprising almost everyone. Bill Murray, founder of Los Angeles Community Policing and host of the "Community Matters" talk show, reflects on the extraordinary accomplishments experienced under Chief Bratton's seven year tenure and explains to co host Sandy Nazemi the process of selecting a new leader at the helm of Los Angeles Police Department, and how the community may be involved. Call in .. let us know how you'd rate Chief Bratton and the LAPD. - "Comunity Matters" dedicated call-in number: 646 / 595-2118 |
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| EDITOR'S NOTE: You may be interested in how LA Community Policing covered the selection of William Bratton as LAPD's Chief of Police (COP) back in 2002. This was our title page entitled "Choosing A Chief" through which you will see the entire process laid out, step by step! |
LAPD Chief William Bratton Letter To Department Employees
Los Angeles: Earlier today, Wednesday, August 5th, I met with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to inform him of my intention to resign my position as Chief of our great Department effective October 31st, so that I may pursue new professionalization of policing opportunities in the private sector. There is never a good time to leave a job and a Department that you love and enjoy, but there is always a right time. That time has now come for me professionally and personally to seek new career challenges.
Since my appointment as Chief of this extraordinary Department in October 2002, by then Mayor James Hahn, we have travelled together on an exciting and successful journey - through good times and bad - meeting crises, challenge and opportunity with consistent optimism, confidence and resolve.
You and I committed to five overarching goals in 2002, and as of today, we can all take justifiable pride and satisfaction in knowing that we have in large measure met and continued to expand their impact in our ultimate purpose for being: to protect and to serve all the residents of this great City.
We committed to reduce crime, fear, and disorder, and we have done that.
We committed to keeping the City safer from terrorism and we have done that while establishing national best practices and initiatives.
We committed to full implementation of the Federal Consent Decree, and while it took longer than originally anticipated, we have done that.
We campaigned to grow the Department by 1,000 officers and with the focused leadership of Mayor Villaraigosa and the support of the City Council and voters we are doing that.
We also committed to Bias-Free Policing, to ensure that all the residents and visitors to our City of Angels would be the benefactors of constitutional, compassionate, consistent policing in every neighborhood. |
The recent Harvard Study and Los Angeles Times poll have conclusively shown that a significant majority of all Angelinos feel that you are succeeding. It will not be easy to leave because, while much has been done, there is still much more that can be done. But having met the personal and professional challenges that I set for myself, I feel that this is an appropriate time for new leadership to move the Department forward and meet the challenges that lie ahead. Thank you for the honor, the privilege and the enjoyment of working with you, and for the opportunity to tell your story during these past seven years. I hope that each of you in some way, no matter what your position, felt that you were part of what I believe will be a very special time in the history of the Department – our Department – a Department that is without question second to none. It has truly been an honor and a privilege to be your chief.
All the best,
WJB
August 05, 2009 |
Newspaper coverage below
August 6, 2009
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Bratton's exit poses a major challenge for L.A.
The LAPD chief's surprise announcement that he will run a private security firm gives the city three months to find a replacement.
LA Times
by Joel Rubin
August 6, 2009
William J. Bratton's announcement Wednesday that he would resign as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department caught Angelenos by surprise, including the mayor and police leaders who suddenly found themselves confronted with the daunting task of replacing one of the nation's most influential law enforcement figures.
Bratton's unexpected decision set in motion what promises to be an intense and wide-ranging search for his successor. With just three months before Bratton departs for his new job as head of a private security firm, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and others involved in the selection must act quickly or face the less palatable option of putting an interim leader in place -- something Villaraigosa said during a news conference that he'd rather not do.
Several people from inside the LAPD are obvious candidates for the job -- Bratton's three assistant chiefs, Jim McDonnell, Earl Paysinger and Sharon Papa. Another likely internal candidate is Deputy Chief Charlie Beck, a highly regarded veteran who has risen rapidly under Bratton and oversees the department's detectives. They all declined to comment, saying they were still trying to digest the news of Bratton's departure and that it would be inappropriate to look ahead while he was still chief.
George Gascon, a former LAPD deputy chief who left several years ago to take over a smaller department in Arizona and recently was tapped as the new chief in San Francisco, has also been mentioned by LAPD-watchers as a possible replacement from the outside. Gascon could not be reached for comment, but Bratton went out of his way to tamp down that speculation, saying he believed it was unlikely Gascon would apply because of his recent hiring.
With many in the department believing that Bratton would finish, or at least come close to finishing, the three years left in his current term, his announcement was certain to accelerate what had been up to now the early, quiet stages of jockeying among those with ambitions of assuming the LAPD's top post.
During a private afternoon meeting with his command staff at the department's training academy, Bratton emphasized that he wanted his replacement to come from the team of 12 deputy and assistant chiefs he relies on to run the day-to-day operations of the department. "He told us, 'I strongly believe that the next LAPD chief is sitting here in this room,' " said one high-ranking official who asked not to be named because the meeting was not open to the public.
Villaraigosa, for his part, refused to tip his hand on whether he would prefer to see finalists for the job come from within or outside the department.
"We're going to give a very, very extensive opportunity to people within the department and outside. I certainly believe there are people inside the department who are capable, who are committed to reform, who have the wherewithal to lead this department, but I'm not going to in any way limit opportunities," he told reporters.
Members of the Police Commission, the civilian board that oversees the LAPD, took an equally noncommittal stance. Under the terms of the City Charter, the city's personnel department must conduct a search for candidates and pass along at least six names to the Police Commission. The commission, in turn, selects and ranks three finalists and, from those, Villaraigosa picks a new chief or rejects them all and demands more choices. The City Council must ratify the mayor's ultimate choice.
For all the talk of his replacement, there was plenty of attention paid to Bratton as well Wednesday.
"With Chief Bratton at the helm, the Los Angeles Police Department transformed itself into a beacon of progress and professionalism, a department seen as a partner, not an adversary, no longer bound by the misdeeds of the past," Villaraigosa said.
Many others echoed the mayor with praise for Bratton, who has dramatically reshaped the LAPD and pushed down crime rates since taking over in 2002.
"He is leaving at the top of his game, with a long list of accomplishments and on his own terms," Police Commissioner Alan Skobin said. "There isn't anyone who can argue credibly that this department isn't in better shape than it was before he arrived. That being said, there's still much work to be done and I am saddened that he won't be around to do it."
Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, expressed disappointment that Bratton had clashed with her group over the issue of racial profiling, but called his resignation "a great loss for the city of Los Angeles. He believes in community policing, and he restored the confidence of the community in the LAPD. I watched three prior police chiefs run the LAPD, and the reality is that progress was not made until Chief Bratton became chief and imposed his will and values on the department."
For his part, Bratton expressed satisfaction that he had accomplished what he set out to do when he arrived nearly seven years ago. But, his voice catching at times and his eyes watering, he said it was not easy to take off a badge he said he has worn with pride.
"There is never a good time to leave, but there is a right time," he said. "It is the right time."
Bratton had kept his decision to resign very much to himself. As the chief flew back to Los Angeles on Tuesday night after finalizing the terms of his new job in New York, aides to Villaraigosa said the mayor knew nothing of the planned departure.
Bratton informed the mayor of his decision to resign late Tuesday night, shortly after Villaraigosa returned on a flight from Iceland, where he had been vacationing for the last week. Villaraigosa did not provide any details of the conversation Wednesday, but a source familiar with the situation said Bratton was steadfast in his decision to leave.
A week ago, Bratton scheduled a meeting with the mayor for Wednesday, but did not specify what he wanted to discuss.
Likewise, members of the Police Commission, as well as the deputy and assistant chiefs whom Bratton entrusts with the day-to-day operation of the department, knew nothing of Bratton's plans until the chief informed them Wednesday morning.
"I'm really in shock. It's a great loss for the city and the LAPD," John Mack, the head of the commission, said in an interview after he received word from the chief. "Bratton has done an amazing job of turning around this department in the aftermath of a tortured history and really created a new department for the 21st century."
Bratton, 61, will become the chief executive of a newly formed firm that will consult with governments, primarily in developing and conflict-ridden countries, to help build and improve police forces.
He was lured to the job by Michael Cherkasky, the former federal monitor who until last month oversaw the LAPD as part of a consent decree forced on the department after the Rampart corruption scandal. Cherkasky, a longtime associate of Bratton's, runs the parent company under which Bratton's firm will operate. Bratton said he would relocate to New York City to run the firm.
It was in Los Angeles that Bratton cemented his reputation as one of the country's leading law enforcement minds.
As he did during a short stint as head of the New York Police Department, Bratton implemented a crime-fighting strategy in Los Angeles built around an obsessive focus on crime data and a computer-mapping system that is used to identify specific areas of the city that require more policing.
That approach, along with a management style that placed considerable authority in the hands of his field commanders, produced results: Crime rates have fallen steadily each year since Bratton's takeover.
Bratton also has pushed hard to close long-running chasms of distrust and antagonism between the department and the city's black and Latino communities that stretched back to the Watts riots and through to the Rodney G. King beating, the 1992 riots, the Rampart scandal and the May Day 2007 melee in MacArthur Park.
He reached out to vocal critics of the department, overhauled how recruits were trained, and moved the department away somewhat from a pervasive, decades-old mentality that officers had to remain separate and isolated from the communities they serve.
Bratton's departure comes as the city's precarious finances threaten to not only stem Los Angeles' ambitious police-hiring program, but also to trigger work furloughs for patrol officers and other police personnel. The LAPD must trim $130 million in spending, a consequence of the cuts imposed by the City Council and mayor to close Los Angeles' $530-million budget shortfall. Police administration officials are considering imposing mandatory furloughs starting in October.
It remains to be seen whether the changes made over the last 6 1/2 years under Bratton have taken deep enough root to outlast the man who oversaw them. In recent interviews with The Times, Bratton has said that he believed the department was prepared for his departure. "If I left tomorrow," he said in December, "this would continue after I'm gone."
He has long brushed aside frequent rumors about his leaving the LAPD for other jobs. British tabloids have often breathlessly announced that he was a front-runner to take over Scotland Yard. And during the recent presidential campaign, he was seen as a strong candidate for a top federal law enforcement job, such as at the Department of Homeland Security. When asked by The Times last month whether his decision to place his Los Feliz home up for sale was a portent of some brewing decision to leave, he said he had no such plans.
Regardless, the termination of the consent decree last month seemed to signal a major turning point for Bratton and his outlook on his tenure at the LAPD. With the department now free of what he believed was the heavy stigma of federal oversight, there appeared to be no big new challenge for Bratton to focus on.
"It has been a remarkable seven years," he said. "But it is time to move on."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bratton6-2009aug06,0,5961681,print.story
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Longtime associate lured Bratton to private security firm
Altegrity Security Consulting will work with local governments, primarily in developing and conflict-ridden countries, to help build and improve police forces.
LA Times
by Joel Rubin
August 6, 2009
In announcing his decision Wednesday to step down as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and reenter the private sector, William J. Bratton turned a spotlight on the firm that has hired him.
Altegrity is a company with several thousand employees and a significant presence in a secretive industry that, among other things, provides businesses and government agencies with intelligence-gathering and other investigative services. Bratton will head up a new subsidiary of the company called Altegrity Security Consulting, which will consult with local governments, primarily in developing and conflict-ridden countries, to help build and improve police forces.
In making the move, Bratton reunites with Michael Cherkasky, a man he first met two decades ago when Bratton was in the midst of a burgeoning career in policing and Cherkasky was a prosecutor in New York City.
Cherkasky, who runs Altegrity and lured Bratton to the new job, is very familiar with what Bratton brings to the table. Before becoming LAPD chief, he worked as a consultant for Cherkasky in a similar role to the one he will now assume. He also worked with the team of consultants that Cherkasky had assembled to monitor the LAPD for the U.S. Department of Justice as part of a consent decree forced on the department after the Rampart corruption scandal. As LAPD chief, Bratton went on to work closely with Cherkasky, who remained the lead monitor overseeing the LAPD until the decree was terminated last month.
Throughout Bratton's tenure as chief in L.A., he and Cherkasky held on to the idea of partnering again someday, Cherkasky said in an interview. Occasional, informal discussions turned serious in recent weeks after the consent decree was lifted, Cherkasky ended his role as monitor, and the two were no longer bound by ethical considerations.
Cherkasky and Bratton, however, acknowledged that they had been discussing the new job in earnest before the formal end of the consent decree. On Wednesday, Bratton dismissed questions of whether that timing posed a conflict of interest since Cherkasky was still monitoring the LAPD and urging the federal judge to end the decree while he and Bratton were in discussions.
Along with Bratton's endeavor, the fast-growing Altegrity has three other primary business operations. Headquartered in Falls Church, Va., USIS provides background investigations, screening services, consulting on national security issues and technology support to government agencies, according to its website. HireRight specializes in employee screening products and services for private companies, and Explore works primarily to develop technology products for the insurance industry.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-altegrity6-2009aug06,0,2246883,print.story
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Will Bratton's reforms survive after his departure?
How well LAPD Chief William J. Bratton's philosophy has been embraced among rank-and-file officers will be the critical factor in determining how sustainable his legacy will be.
LA Times
by Jack Leonard and Richard Winton
August 6, 2009
He came to Los Angeles in 2002, a brash New Englander in a hurry to make his mark and unwilling to mince words.
When a community activist attacked the department, Chief William J. Bratton went on CNN and labeled him a "nitwit." When the City Council refused his request for more officers, he bellowed: "Let them start attending some of the funerals of the victims of crime."
But behind the sometimes in-your-face demeanor, Bratton was also a listener, a skilled politician and -- above all -- an effective cop.
He quietly made his way through South Los Angeles, meeting with black ministers and community activists to talk about race and crime. He demanded that his officers change the way they police and imposed strong discipline for misconduct -- yet he maintained the support of the rank and file.
He presided over a steep drop in crime that left the city safer than it has been in decades. And he managed to persuade two successive mayors to make hiring more officers a top priority -- even when that meant cutting into other programs.
Now, as Bratton is about to leave the city's political stage, some civic leaders expressed concern Wednesday about whether his impressive legacy can be sustained and whether he exited too early.
"I wish he had stayed at least another two years," said Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney and longtime advocate for police reform. "I would not be surprised to see the organization slip back."
Finding a successor with Bratton's skill set -- blunt but empathetic, an old-fashioned cop who believes computer databases can make streets safer -- is going to be difficult.
Bratton came to L.A. in 2002 already a law enforcement superstar who appeared on the cover of Time magazine in the '90s for his success at reducing crime as New York's police commissioner.
Among his top priorities was replicating those efforts in his new town.
Bratton harbored an almost religious belief that police can drive down crime -- that, in his words, "police count." His theory was controversial, with many social scientists discounting the idea that police can be as effective as social forces in reducing crime.
But Bratton viewed Los Angeles, where violent crime was rising when he arrived, as a perfect laboratory for his ideas.
He demanded that commanders use computer-generated crime data to better focus their resources in hot spots. And he identified areas where he wanted to beef up police presence, such as Hollywood and skid row.
Crime, of course, is at least partly cyclical. And some social scientists said Bratton's crime-reduction was somewhat a result of good luck.
Nevertheless, the results were striking.
The city's crime rate has fallen to its lowest levels in 50 years. Violent crime has been sliced by nearly half. In contrast, violent crime in New York dropped by about a quarter over the same period and throughout California by just 8%.
"We have seen such a great reduction in violence and death," said Andy Bales, executive director of the Union Rescue Mission in the heart of skid row. "The chief took on what others long neglected and made skid row a safer place."
Skid row, however, is one of the areas where Bratton's methods have come under fire. Last month, a national homeless advocacy group faulted the department for its aggressive approach toward the homeless and ranked Los Angeles as the meanest city in the nation.
"The LAPD doesn't deserve any praise when it comes to the needs of the homeless," said Carol Sobel, who successfully sued the department over the crackdown.
But most LAPD watchers credited Bratton on Wednesday with transforming a department where critics had typically been kept at arms' length.
Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest and executive director of the gang intervention program Homeboy Industries, said he was once treated as "the enemy" by LAPD commanders. But he said he was impressed when Bratton sought his advice and embraced Boyle's belief that not every gang member is irredeemable, despite the chief's tough talk on gangs.
"He got humility in a hurry, and then he really learned," Boyle said.
Bratton's success in reducing crime also gave him the political cover to make controversial reforms within the department. He is widely credited with rehabilitating the LAPD internally and in its relationship with the city.
As previous chiefs learned only too well, it takes just a single televised incident to open the old wounds of community mistrust of police. But Bratton was able to navigate several of those minefields in ways that previous chiefs were not.
After officers were caught on television beating suspected car thief Stanley Miller in 2004, Bratton banned officers from carrying the large metal flashlights that had been used to strike Miller.
His reaction to scenes of officers marching through MacArthur Park wildly swinging batons and firing foam bullets during a largely peaceful immigration-rights protest was similarly swift. He disciplined top commanders overseeing the police action and commissioned a critical public report of the department's actions that day.
"His handling . . . might not have been as perfect as we would have liked it to have been, but it was certainly better than it would have been under any other previous police chief in this city," said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California.
She said her staff has seen for themselves the difference Bratton has made.
When he took over, the ACLU received more than 10,000 complaints about LAPD officers each year.
Today, the organization gets less than half that, Ripston said.
Bratton implemented the sweeping and often uncomfortable reforms called for in the federal government's consent decree and stabilized a department that before he arrived was rife with infighting among the roughly 10,000 rank-and-file officers.
Police union President Paul M. Weber gave a nod to the unusually amicable relationship, saying, "While we may not have agreed with the chief on all of the issues, the Police Protective League appreciates the working relationship it shared with Bratton."
Bratton has promoted all but a few of the dozens of captains who run the city's police stations. But how well his philosophy has been embraced among rank-and-file officers remains unclear.
Experts said that will be the critical factor in determining how sustainable his legacy will be.
"There is no question that he has changed the culture," said Merrick Bobb, a Los Angeles lawyer who helps monitor and give guidance to police departments around the country. "The question is whether those changes have taken root and will flourish and grow in the months and years to come."
At a news conference announcing his decision to leave, Bratton, 61, offered his own vision of his legacy that focused on his efforts to soothe distrust between police and the city's minority residents.
The department, which has previously been a flash point for racial violence, now boasts that more than half of its officers are minorities.
In June, a Los Angeles Times poll found that the LAPD's popularity had soared among black and Latino voters to levels not seen since the 1980s.
Reflecting on the results, Bratton told reporters that he hoped "there would be an appreciation that on that issue, which has plagued America for 400 years, that we have begun here in the City of Angels to . . . show the way to resolution.
"There's still a long way to go," he said, "but we have begun the journey."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-legacy6-2009aug06,0,7994399,print.story
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William Bratton: A top cop
He faced doubts as L.A.'s police chief, but he proved he was the right man for a tough job.
LA Times - OPINION
August 6, 2009
The thing that made William J. Bratton's 2002 appointment as Los Angeles police chief so astounding was how poor a fit he seemed for this city, at least to observers who knew him mostly from his press clippings. A brash Bostonian by way of New York, he had a reputation for clashing with politicians, hogging the spotlight and offending the sensibilities of numerous interest groups. He was coming to town after the Rampart corruption scandal, with the Police Department operating under a federal monitor pursuant to a consent decree, succeeding two African American chiefs who had tried but failed to end the legacy of mistrust between the LAPD and the city's black and Latino communities. He was certain to meet his match, as have so many others, in the low-key, nuance-laden backroom political environment that is Los Angeles. If he somehow managed not to antagonize quiet Mayor James K. Hahn, who appointed him, he was certain to battle for camera time with the flashier Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Now we know better. Bratton was the right person in the right place at the right time, and it wasn't because of some East Coast brand of toughness and bluster. It turned out, in fact, that in addition to being a talented leader and police administrator, Bratton had an unusual knack for understanding the histories and sensitivities, the needs and demands of Los Angeles communities. He could be refreshingly candid and colorful, calling people nitwits or knuckleheads, verbally skewering members of the City Council (but never the mayor), and he could at the same time court neighborhoods and defuse tensions. In leading the LAPD, he may have done more to improve race relations in Los Angeles than anyone since Tom Bradley. He put his talents to work redeeming the LAPD's professionalism and integrity while jettisoning much of its self-destructive, insular, backward-looking culture.
In retrospect, all those clippings from his previous posts told more about the politicians for whom he worked than about Bratton, his talent and his approach to policing. In Boston and in New York, but most sweepingly in Los Angeles, he has transformed what we expect of a police department. It once was accepted wisdom that this city, like others, had to choose between two types of policing: one that was aggressive and brutal, trampling on the rights of suspects and bystanders, alienating communities, especially the poor and nonwhite, while cracking down on crime; or one that was restrained on the street, respectful of civil rights and human dignity but weak on crime. Bratton showed that the city didn't have to make that choice. He demonstrated that effective policing demanded officers with the best equipment, the most up-to-date training, capable administration, respect for the communities they serve and an unswerving commitment to ridding the streets of crime.
During his tenure, homicides decreased by 42%, forcible rape by 44%, robbery by 22%, aggravated assault by 63%, all violent crime by 49%. This giant, sprawling city will never feel to residents like the safe hamlet Los Angeles appeared to be half a century ago, but the statistics show that the city has a crime rate and crime trends not seen since the 1950s.
Bratton achieved those numbers with tools such as Compstat, a computerized crime-tracking system, which allowed him to quickly target problem areas on the street and prevent crime from metastasizing. He used a similar tool to protect against corruption, laziness and excessive tactics among his officers.
There were problems. Bratton's tenure included officers' 2004 beating of Stanley Miller with a flashlight; an officer's killing of 13-year-old Devin Brown; the accidental shooting by SWAT officers of 15-month-old Suzie Peña; and the 2007 May Day fiasco in MacArthur Park, in which officers beat and fired nonlethal rounds at peaceful demonstrators.
Each shooting, each clash was serious and raised tensions in the city, as they had under previous chiefs. The difference is that under Bratton the tensions dissipated, in large part because the chief made it clear that he took anger and outrage seriously, that while he backed his officers, he was willing to question their actions, training and command, and that he was intent on making sure the same mistakes never happened again.
His success instilled confidence, and that allowed Villaraigosa to make headway on a long-standing goal for the department, something that could not be achieved by Hahn or Mayor Richard Riordan before him -- to expand its ranks to a consistent and sustainable 10,000 officers. To do it, the mayor and the chief joined forces repeatedly to increase the police budget. The council balked, but in the end came around -- precisely because members believed that Bratton knew what he was doing.
If he knew what he was doing, though, the chief didn't always share it with the rest of us. He has pushed for LAPD transparency, but he also has asserted that because of his achievements, residents and reporters should trust the department more. His skin is as thin as any Los Angeles politician's, and his ego -- let's call it self-confidence -- is legendary.
But on balance, he has been a boon for Los Angeles and will be hard to replace. He came in with the consent decree; having rebuilt the department, he leaves with the decree's end.
Bratton said toward the end of his first term that he needed about seven years to ensure that the cultural shift and institutional changes he brought to the department become permanent. He's been right on many things. Let's hope he's right on this as well.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-bratton6-2009aug06,0,424566,print.story
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Goodbye to the chief
by James Q. Wilson
August 6, 2009
William J. Bratton has been the best thing that happened to the LAPD since William H. Parker, the man who created our modern Police Department over half a century ago. Bratton came to a city plagued by high rates of crime, rampant gang violence, the unhappy memory of the Rodney King riots, deep distrust between the police and the black community and a consent decree in which a federal judge made clear his intention to make wholesale changes in how we were policed.
Now he will leave a city -- for a job with a private security firm -- with a much lower crime rate, less gang violence, restored confidence between blacks and the police and progress in implementing (often for better but sometimes for worse) the consent decree, which was lifted last month.
I have no idea why he has decided to leave now except, perhaps, the thought that one ought to leave 'em laughing. Or, in this case, smiling in gratitude.
Bratton came out of a working-class Boston neighborhood. After serving in Vietnam, he became a Boston cop and quickly rose in rank. Within 10 years, he was the executive superintendent of that department, the youngest in its history.
In 1990, he became chief of New York City's transit police, where he adopted new tactics that ended graffiti on subway cars, stopped riders from jumping over turnstiles to evade the fare and restored order to the grim tunnels in which millions of New Yorkers waited for transportation.
Then he went back to Boston to head its Police Department. In 1994, he became the top cop in New York. That is where I first met him. He came to see me at a private meeting to say that he knew how to cut crime but most criminologists and many reporters didn't believe him. I told him that most criminologists and reporters didn't trust me either, and so we had a lot in common.
Working with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, he developed tactics that the city's police force had not seen for many years. One was to focus on public order as well as major crime, in part because citizens valued order and in part because improving order might help reduce crime as law-abiding citizens made more frequent and peaceful use of the streets.
A dozen years before, George L. Kelling and I had published "Broken Windows" in the Atlantic, making just this argument, but when Bratton took over the NYPD not a single scientific study had been done to test our theory. That did not bother Bill.
But that was only a small, and probably minor, part of what he did. He put in place Compstat to track crime and to hold precinct commanders accountable for the crime rates in their districts. That sounds like an obvious thing to do, but it wasn't: Until then, most police chiefs managed the inputs (money, people, radio cars) their subordinates used, not the outputs (public safety) they produced.
He also created a street anti-crime squad that confiscated guns being illegally carried in public places. This is not easy. The Supreme Court, in a ruling over half a century old, held that police can stop and pat down a person if they are "reasonably suspicious" that the person may be carrying a gun. Thousands of guns left the streets.
Within two years, the New York crime rate dropped by one-third. When the mayor and the chief got into a quarrel about who would get the credit for these gains, Bratton left. After a few years in private life, he came to L.A., appointed by a mayor, James Hahn, who never got into a quarrel over who should take credit for improvements in public safety.
When he came here, in 2002, Bratton faced a huge problem: Not enough police officers -- in New York City, he had 35,000; in L.A. then, about 9,000. There are nearly 10,000 now, but that problem still has not been solved. Still Bratton made the crime rate drop, for six consecutive years.
It has been extraordinary. Crime rates have risen in some California cities, but they've fallen in its largest one. It will be a long time before scholars unravel what happened. In the meantime, another nice thing happened: Studies in Jersey City, N.J.; Lowell, Mass.; and New York City (and in one town in the Netherlands) showed that worrying about public order and minor offenses indeed helps bring down the crime rate. The Broken Windows theory survives, a quarter of a century after it was written. But Bratton had the instinct to worry about minor street offenses even without the data, because it seemed right.
The new chief will have big shoes to fill. But there is still a lot to do. We need more officers; the department needs more money. Defusing gangs remains an urgent priority. And the city can finally come out from under the consent decree.
James Q. Wilson teaches at Pepperdine University and is the author of "Thinking About Crime."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wilson6-2009aug06,0,6515980,print.story
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Thanks, chief
Daily News - OPINION
When Chief William Bratton came to Los Angeles nearly seven years ago, he faced the daunting challenge of restoring an ailing agency. The Los Angeles Police Department was mired in controversy. Violent crime was on the rise, police officers were demoralized, the public was distrustful and the Rampart police corruption scandal was still a dark cloud over Parker Center.
Yet, it was those very challenges that drew Bratton - who had become a kind of celebrity police chief during his tenure at the New York Police Department - to Los Angeles.
When Bratton was nominated by former Mayor James Hahn, he pledged to restore the LAPD to its former glory: "We will take that - the most famous shield, the most famous badge in the world - and whatever little varnish, a little tarnish exists, it will be wiped clean, and that it will be the most brilliantly shining badge of any in the United States."
Bratton has just about fulfilled that promise. Over the past seven years the chief has transformed the LAPD into a modern, diverse and community-oriented public safety agency that can be a model for other departments.
He introduced the CompStat program, which used crime statistics and computer mapping to identify crime trends. After 9-11, he helped hone the department's anti-terrorism response. And he boosted the efforts of community policing, bringing officers closer to the people they serve.
Through his tenure, Bratton complained that Los Angeles was the most underpoliced large city in the nation, and he continually pushed for more police officers. With increases in the city's trash fee starting in 2006, the LAPD finally began expanding the force by 1,000 officers - a goal that will finally be met this year. Through that expansion, the LAPD has become a diverse agency that looks more like the communities it serves.
Crime has fallen each year of Bratton's tenure, with a 38 percent drop in overall crime and a roughly 50 percent reduction in violent crime and homicides. Not only has that helped improve officer morale, it has helped to dramatically boost the public perception of the LAPD. A Harvard University study released in May found 83 percent of city residents believed the LAPD was doing a good or excellent job.
That hard work paid off last month when a federal judge decided the LAPD had undergone enough reform to finally lift the eight-year-old consent decree that had been imposed in the wake of the Rampart internal corruption and police abuse scandal.
Before he was hired to head the LAPD, Bratton had been part of the team monitoring the department's compliance with the consent decree. Prior to his arrival, LAPD leadership had chafed under the oversight and was slow to implement the needed reforms.
Bratton embraced the call for change and quickly set about enacting a series of reforms, such as requiring financial disclosure by gang and narcotics officers, banning racial profiling and improving training. While the LAPD is far from perfect, the agency under Bratton's leadership has shown a willingness to investigate and openly deal with scandal.
We saw that reform in action after the May Day melee in 2007, when police officers fired rubber bullets and aggressively dispersed a largely peaceful pro-immigration rally. Bratton immediately berated the department for its response, and he helped restore trust within the community and defused a potentially volatile situation by quickly admitting fault, apologizing and demoting command staff responsible for overseeing the rally.
Through the past seven years, we've come to expect a refreshing candor from Chief Bratton - he was willing to say the LAPD was wrong when he believed it was wrong and he was willing to loudly defend his officers when he felt they were right. He was never hesitant to speak his mind, whether calling out nitwits or chastising bloviating politicians.
Bratton leaves the LAPD a much stronger, healthier department than when he arrived; he has restored the sheen to the famous badge. Thank you, Chief Bratton, for your service. We hope your successor continues your good work.
http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_13000455
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Most likely contenders for LAPD chief's job
LA Times - OPINION
These are some of the possible candidates to succeed William J. Bratton as head of the Los Angeles Police Department:
CHARLES BECK
Position: Deputy chief; chief of detectives
Years in the LAPD: 32
Age: 56
Married with three children
Education: Cal State Long Beach, bachelor of arts in occupational studies-vocational arts
* The son of an LAPD deputy chief, Beck was promoted from captain to deputy chief during Bratton's tenure. He is a popular figure with rank-and-file officers; two of Beck's three children are LAPD officers. Bratton often turned to Beck to handle controversial problems, such as the massive DNA testing backlog and errors in fingerprint analysis.
GEORGE GASCON
Position: Chief of the San Francisco Police Department
Years in the LAPD: 28
Age: 55
Divorced, father of two daughters
Education: Cal State Long Beach, bachelor of arts in history; Western State University College of Law, law degree
* He is a native of Cuba who fled as a child. Bratton attributes a big part of the crime reduction during his tenure to Gascon's leadership and focus on arresting the most prolific criminals. Gascon was a contender for chief in 2002. In 2006, he became police chief in Mesa, Ariz., and he was selected in June to be San Francisco's police chief.
JIM McDONNELL
Position: First assistant chief and Bratton's chief of staff
Years in the LAPD: 28
Age: 49
Married with two daughters
Education: St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, bachelor of science degree in criminal justice; USC, master's degree in public administration
* A Boston-area native, McDonnell was a contender to be chief in 2002. Bratton used a 100-page plan developed by McDonnell as a blueprint for reshaping the department. When Bratton is out of town, McDonnell often serves as chief and also is the department's liaison to council members and community leaders.
SHARON PAPA
Position: Assistant chief; heads the Office of Support Services, overseeing budget, recruitment, planning and facilities.
Years in the LAPD: 11
Previously, she worked for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's police department for 17 years.
Age: 51
Married
Education: University of Redlands, bachelor of arts degree in business management * Papa served as chief of police for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority until it merged with the LAPD in 1997. She often appears before council committees as the department's representative. Papa was Bratton's first chief of staff, and in 2003 became the first woman to hold the rank of assistant chief.
EARL PAYSINGER
Position: Assistant chief; head of daily LAPD operations
Years in the LAPD: 32
Age: 53
Married with two sons
Education: Cal State Long Beach, bachelor of science degree in criminal justice
* Bratton first picked Paysinger to be deputy chief of the bureau that patrols South Los Angeles. He is credited with driving crime down in South L.A. while at the same time reducing tensions between the community and the Police Department.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bio-boxes6-2009aug06,0,6374452,print.story |
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