The London police are considering recruiting American “supercop” Bill Bratton, what do you personally think about him and his effectiveness.
Never heard of him. Looking at Wikipedia, he looks pretty well qualified. No reason most Americans would have heard of him, though. He’s been in charge of police in both NYC and LA, but that doesn’t make him well known. I couldn’t tell you the name of the chief police of any city in the US.
He’s famous in certain circles for applying modern management techniques and computerization to metropolitan law enforcement. He was Rudy Giuliani’s Chief of Police for a while and was quite successful: Giuliani in fact ushered him out because he didn’t want him to take the credit.
My question would be whether Bratton has done anything that the London Metropolitan Police are not already doing. I’d also be curious about whether hiring him as a consultant might be sufficient. Huh. I see from wikipedia that they did exactly that.
He’s a bright guy. Hiring him would be good for London and good for the world as giving him another laboratory will add to our knowledge of crime control.
I think he takes disproportionate credit for lower crime in NYC, certainly some of his policies paid off, but I think his tenure also coincided with a period of reduced criminality that was influence by factors beyond his control. Also, increased order comes with a price and there were a number of high profile instances of NYC police behaving in a way that seemed that they viewed certain segments of society as the enemy rather than the community they were sworn to serve.
Nope, still haven’t heard of him!
I have heard about him, though. The decline in crime in New York City under Giuliani is legendary. (So I suppose his ploy for taking credit from Bratton worked!) Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it in The Tipping Point and popularized the “Broken Window” theory of policing, which he credited with lowering the crime in NYC. Others have disagreed, though, pointing out that crime began dropping before those policing practices were put in place and dropped nationwide, not just in New York. The Freakonomics guys attributed it to would-be mothers of would-be criminals having abortions following Roe v. Wade! So who knows.
But I guess his accomplishments (if they are his) are pretty famous, even if his name isn’t widely known.
I read Bratton’s book and one by one of his subordinates and I think he is one of the unsung heros of the last 20 years. What he did was bring modern management to policing. Before a successful police department was one that responded quickly to comfort the victims of crime, or made alot of arrests. He changed the metrics that police were judged on to amount of crime in an area. The idea of holding police brass accountable for crime prevention revolutionized policing in America. Watch “Serpico” or “Death Wish” to understand NYC before Bratton. It is now the safest big city in America. It is no exagerration to say that thousands of people are alive now because of Bratton and his ideas.
The crime rate falling is not totally because of Bratton, but probably around half of it is. The abortion crime link was just bad statistics, and a good bit of the drop can be attributed to other factors such as reduced lead in the environment and more criminals in prison. Most people do not understand just how much safer the US is than it was, for example rapes are one third less common than they were 30 years ago. London could sure use him, NYC and London have almost the same budget for police but London has 7 times the crime rate.
I think he’s done some good in Los Angeles. I don’t suppose a big city PD ever gets everything 100% right, though, as can be inferred from the linked article. The LAPD came under some well-deserved criticism for its handling of the McArthur Park pro-immigrant rally. On the other hand, the Park itself is a good example of an area which, 20 years ago, was pretty much a no-go area you drove past as quickly as possible; but now has become a lot safer. They have free outdoor film showings on summer evenings now, a thing which once would have been inconceivable.
Have you ever been to NYC?
By all accounts he has done remarkable work in Los Angeles, and what’s interesting about his LA work is that in many respects he worked things the opposite way as they were done in NYC; he has taken an aggressive, authoritarian police force and made it much closer to, and respected by, the citizenry.
I’m not all that impressed by someone who can improve one situation. Someone who can improve TWO different situations, now that impresses me.
This is more or less how I feel as well. I lived in NY pre-Giuliani and still do. I recall his campaign against the squeegee guys with a distinct lack of fondness. I was very skeptical of Bratton’s impact. I felt he simply rose on a rising tide but just wasn’t quite as big of an asshole as his boss. I still think this is largely true, and that the impact of CompStat is heavily overstated.
But I think there is definitely something to the guy now that he has turned around LA, too. He might have just gotten lucky once, but I don’t think he just got lucky twice. Here is a pretty interesting article from NY Magazine about him from a few years ago.
To the OP, if you’re wondering if the guy is worth listening to, the answer is definitely Yes.
He got his start in Boston, btw - and got forced out of town for annoying too many people in the power structure. His methods work, but there’s inevitably a credit-sharing problem wherever he goes, and likely will be one in London, too - even if Cameron has his back.
Yeah, I don’t think that he is incompetent, only that his work coincided with some other factors that also played a part and that he gets too much credit. Also, if I was from the UK, I would really be wary of someone coming from outside of the British policing and legal traditions to fix it.
In the book Freakonomics (which it is not without its critics, it must be said) the authors discuss this (I think about Bratton in particular).
They make a pretty strong case that the crime drops Bill Braton takes credit for had nothing to with him being a super cop or his innovative policing practices, and everything to do with increased police numbers.
Wikipedia says crime dropped in L.A. for 6 consecutive years under Bratton. I’ll take the stats with a grain of salt, but did he achieve that without a significant increase in the size of the police force? If I’m not mistaken, the L.A.P.D. polices a city half the size of NYC with a police force 1/5 as large. If he achieved more in L.A. with less, that’s something to be commended.
The point made in the book is that is the increase in the number of officers OVER time. Its not the the size of the LAPD relative to LA as a city (versus the NYPD/NY) that matters, but how much the police force in LA increased over the time he is taking credit for.
Their point (and they had some stats to back this up) was that it wasn’t Bratton or his “innovative” methods that made the difference, but the simple fact that more police equates to less crime.
Of course as the UK in the grip of severe austerity and police numbers are falling. Then this would not apply there.
That wouldn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t him. Maybe the total number of police increase because he is around. His recruiting techniques might be better, or his ability to keep cops happy on the job is better, so they’re more likely to stay on the job for successive years. In either case, you would have an increased overall number of police.
Bratton could do a lot of good, but it would take a miracle to turn around London. We aren’t talking about just turning around the police force, but the whole culture that needs to be fixed. When he starts arresting people for turnstile jumping and graffiti and similar crimes, it will like a bomb going off.
Also keep in mind that he would be under the Interior Minister and I doubt he would get the support he needs for even a good start. In NY he just needed to keep the Mayor on his side.
Not American, but this obsession by Cameron with parachuting Bratton into top job at the Met gets a :rolleyes: from me. He has no experience with British policing, which is not the same as American policing. Allowing a foreigner to work in what is essentially a highly sensitive role for National Security is also a bit of a WTF?
Further, it’s a slap in the face to the British police officers who’ve worked their way to the top. Orde, the guy supposedly in line for top job, is a former Northern Ireland Chief Constable and Commander for Community Relations in the Met. I can’t see how what Bratton espouses is in any way controversial amongst the top brass, especially Orde, of the British police forces.
Essentially this Bratton obsession has been one huge publicity stunt. The only thing Bratton’s brought to the table is a) headlines, and b) an attempt by Cameron to put what he perceives as a Labour biased ACPO in its place.
To be clear, the Met are definitely not recruiting Bill Bratton. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, has appointed him as an “advisor”. He can advise away but the actual Chief Constables - who run the individual police forces - don’t have to listen.
One factual question: can anybody point me at actual data on the level of gang crime and violence in NYC and LA? My impression was that, improved or not, it was still higher than in most UK cities.
Do they consider the absorbtion of the Transit Police into the NYPD an “increase” in the police force? Both forces already existed, however, under Bratton the once-useless Transit Police force was first greatly improved, and then regularized into the NYPD.
http://www.londonandnyc.com/2010/12/crime-rate-summary-in-london-and-new.html
According to this, for a slightly smaller population, London has 10 times as many assaults, and three times the rapes of New York City. :eek:
It doesn’t go into detail except to say they are official numbers, but it’s consistent with the more direct links you can find on the subject in Wikpedia (here) Which suggest that the per capita rate for assaults with harm in London (9.5 per 1,000) is almost double that of all violent crimes in NYC (~5.5 per 1,000)