Word: bratton
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Exhibit A for supporters of the new policing is New York City, where major crime--murder, rape, robbery, auto theft, grand larceny, assault and burglary--is in something like statistical free fall, dropping 17.5% last year. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his police commissioner, William Bratton, both insist that the reason is their devotion to new ways of doing police business. John DiIulio Jr., a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, says that since the mid-'80s top brass who embrace a similar shift in philosophy have risen to key positions in cities all around the country...
Lawrence launches into a first-rate description of his anticrime efforts, but the ceo of this organization--a slim, well-tended man who wears his reading glasses slung low on an impressive nose--barely looks up from his papers. Police Commissioner William Bratton designed these Comstat (short for computer statistics) meetings as a way to make his 76 far-flung precinct commanders--and 38,000 cops--accountable for the crime rate. Nobody had ever done it before, and it's working: total felonies in New York City are down 27% in just two years, to levels not seen since...
...those waters seem bitter to some--cops who can't take Comstat's pressure, black and Latino leaders who say some of Bratton's cops carry his aggressive style too far--"that's too damn bad," says Bratton. Success isn't pretty, even for his troops. Effective precinct commanders such as Lawrence (crime was down 15% in his precinct in 1995) merely get grilled to a medium rare at Comstat. Those who show up unprepared, without coherent strategies to reduce crime, are fried crisp, then stripped of their commands. Half of all precinct bosses have been replaced under Bratton. Those...
...have delivered big time," says Bratton, standing to address his Comstat managers. He reminds them that when he was hired away from the Boston Police Department in January 1994 by Mayor-elect Rudolph Giuliani, who had made crime and quality of life his major campaign themes, Bratton had asked for an immediate 10% decrease in crime (the request was met with derision and disbelief). "In the end, we got 12%," he notes. "In 1995 I raised the bar to a 15% reduction, and you gave me 17. Last year you accounted for 60% of the national crime decline--all from...
...drop in shootings over the next two months. Says Cordero: "The point was to send a clear message to the criminal element that we're serious about this." His boss has also laid on the pressure. "If they don't perform, they're taken out very quickly," warns Bratton, who in the past 18 months has replaced three-fourths of the city's precinct heads...