Is NYPD Commissioner Bratton helping or hurting?

In My Humble Opinion
1

NYPD chief (meaning, Commissioner Bratton) says rift between police and mayor ‘will go on for a while’

Seriously, I’m asking for any discussion of facts or opinions here in IMHO, as opposed to throwing this into that Pit thread because I really don’t know enough about Bratton himself or exactly what he’s saying or doing in any great detail.

Is he the right guy at the right time for this job? Is he a tactful negotiator who can work with the police, and with the city administration, and with the people of NYC to improve relations among them all? Or is he just going to inflame tensions all the more like union boss Patrick Lynch is doing? (Link goes to CNN Op-Ed piece.)

Facts, opinions, discussions, NE1?

2

Bratton also said the officer’s turning their back to the mayor was inappropriate.

3

Will the police, or at least the Union, vilify him for that? Is Bratton in a no-win position?

4

I don’t know. Some people blame him for the aggressive policing that led to the Garner incident, but after working as the head cop in LA for a while he returned to NYC (appointed by De Blasio) with a message of reducing the hostility between the police and the public. I don’t really know where he stands right now in his own opinions or the opinions of others. I think he has the respect of the PD though, maybe more than they respect the union.

5

Sunday New York Times has an article about how Bratton is dealing with this: Bratton’s Unsought Role: Peacemaker Between His Officers and His Boss.

TL;DR: He seems to generally support the mayor and criticize the police for their behavior, but he is walking on eggshells here (my interpretation) and trying to be very tactful.

6

How should the public view the police in this case?

Does the date Dec. 6, 1989 bring back any memories for you? I must admit that date doesn’t bring back many memories to me. It’s not like Nov. 22, 1963 which certainly does bring back memories to me. That was the date that JFK was assassinated and I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I learned of that assassination.

in Montreal on Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lepine, age 25 massacred 14 women for no other reason other than they were women. I always felt that was a pretty insane reason and he was clearly insane.

Why is that relevant to this thread? There is one fact about that massacre that people may not remember. After police arrived on the scene, it took them a very long time to get out of their cars and do anything to try and stop this massacre from happening because they were worried about their own safety and wanted to be certain the gunman was dead before they risked their own lives by entering the building.

Can you imagine any of the NYPD witnessing some terrorists in action but refusing to get out of their cars to stop it until they were certain all the terrorists were dead?

At the time (in 1989), that seemed very cowardly to me. The massacre could have been in progress and many more women could have been murdered while police waited in their cars.

I lost a great deal of respect for the police on that day.

Now police are not pursuing many aspects of their jobs that they are happy to pursue most of the time.

What are we supposed to think about police who are happy to give us speeding tickets most days but feel that is now no longer important.

To my mind, it says they don’t really think speeding is all that important. The NYPD is called New York’s Finest - not New York’s Bravest.

Do you know how many fire fighters died on 911? Do you know how many police people died on that date?

Are the NYPD to be considered brave? Or are they to be considered brave only when their own lives are not in danger?

I lost a great deal of respect for the police on Dec. 6, 1989. I have now lost a great deal more.

I don’t care if they don’t want to give out speeding tickets. But it makes me very angry when they are happy to give me speeding tickets and lecture me about the dangers of speeding. However, when their lives are in danger, they seem to be happy to hide.

That does not strike me as very brave. I just wish someone could perform a calculation of the percentage of income generated by them giving out speeding tickets and then telling the NYPD, "We understand why you don’t want to give out speeding tickets while your lives are in danger. But we will be deducting a portion of your salary equivalent to the income that speeding tickets would have generated until you are willing to resume the full scope of your jobs.

P.S. I wrote this post in a hurry because I have many other things to do today and I’m sorry if this post contains some factual or stylistic errors. It just burns me up that I have received so many fines and lectures from the police about minor traffic violations. Yet, they are now unwilling to do their jobs because they are facing danger.

I can certainly understand why the police are acting this way. I just don’t have a great deal of respect for them - all things considered.

7

Darn! I was cut off by the editing time limit.

I sure do wish I had more time so that I could have trimmed my post above. But I admit that is my own fault. I should have taken the time to edit my post in an offline editor first and then posted it after I felt it was trimmed down.

I apologize to all those people who will find my post too long and will not read it as a result.

8

Just because accuracy matters, there is a big difference between a chief and a commissioner. Although most commissioners used to be police officers they do not have police powers*. They are civilian administrators. The highest uniformed officer in the NYPD is the Chief of Department, James O’Neill. Commissioners deal with the admin stuff, Chiefs deal with cop stuff.

*In the NYPD if a commissioner came up through the ranks he would also retain his full police powers. Since Bratton came up through the Boston Police Department he was never a sworn New York officer. Another example would be Howard Safir. He was NYPD Commissioner from 1996-2000. He started his career with the DEA and Marshals. He was Fire Commissioner in NYC before he became Police Commissioner.

9

I commend police officers who place themselves in the line of fire, but it shouldn’t be a requirement of the job. The Garner case shows why, he was no great danger to anybody, they could have just surrounded him and waited. If he got away, that’s the breaks. The police didn’t create him, society at large did, and the police are just being sent out as bulldogs to clean up the mess everyone else is ignoring. We deserve to live with the danger we create. Your attitude is blaming the police for crime, there’s little they can do about it, and they shouldn’t need to assume great risk in cleaning up afterwards. That’s what makes them afraid, and fear leads to mistakes and unnecessary violence.

10

Tripolar,

I respect and understand your opinion.

I just feel that if someone agrees to be a police officer, they accept the risks involved.

If they don’t want to accept the risks, they shouldn’t agree to be a police officer.

If they feel they are not sufficiently compensated for taking these risks, then they should get their unions to help them get more compensation.

I just keep flashing back to the Montreal Massacre and in my minds eye, I keep seeing these fat slob Montreal cops (I was once arrested by a Montreal cop and he was unshaven and his uniform was filthy dirty and I didn’t do anything to him. But he called me a “F***en Punk” even though I never had any prior dealings with him.

Oh Gosh! I could keep on going forever about how much I despise Montreal police officers and how unprofessional they are.

I’m sorry if I have gotten off topic. My comments are definitelyl tainted due to my experiences with Montreal cops. I’m sorry.

11

I think it is not only a requirement, but the essential defining one. What is the point of having police who do not interpose themselves between criminality and citizens?

12

So if a criminal pulls a gun when facing the police, you think it should be OK for the police to then withdraw from the situation and they should expect the criminals to then not use their guns?

Would you put the criminals on some kind of “honor system”?

Do you think they could then be trusted to not shoot anyone?

13

Uh… you are either quoting the wrong post or completely misreading me.

No.

14

Peremensoe,

Very sorry. My mistake.

15

I was born in ny and when I left that area I still had some respect for the police, even knowing about all the corruption and other issues.

After 20+ years in alaska there is not even a faint shadow of respect for police. They are thugs.

My favorite article, actually two, was one article about a Samoan who got killed with lots of witnesses who would not speak. The police called the witnesses cowardly or similar for not speaking about the crime. Same day, dame page, police refusing to cooperate with an internal investigation into corruption in some city.

Someone in ny, and lots of other places, needs to knock the stuffing out of these gangster police and help them realize they are employees hired to do a job, not mafia chieftains.

16

Someone sent me a caution that this board leans right wing, so I’ll justify my opinion a little.

NYPD officers make $90,000 within a few years plus benefits no other job even comes close to, like unlimited sick days etc.

The job is not that dangerous. There are housing projects all around the country where residents have much higher danger by any measure.

NYPD has a long history of corruption, and it runs right up to today. The NYT ran an article a few years ago mentioning three major corruption cases in NYC and pointing out that not one of those cases was done by internal affairs. All were the result of outside agencies.

There is no other legal job where a person can get away with what po!ice get away with, and then intimidate the public into going along. Look at the link I posted in my first thread here. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=285_1418952250 An FBI agent intimidates a very recent immigrant into confessing so a high profile case can be solved. Basically he sent a likely innocent person to prison so he could look good. And he has no worries even now that the tape is public because the FBI is just as slow to discipline their own as the NYPD.

Police have an important job in society. I’ve had relatives who were honest police officers and who would be disgusted with a lot of the stuff that gets ignored now. Police need to either start holding themselves to some reasonable standard of accountability or history teaches us that the accountability will be irrational and harmful when it comes from society itself.

Even worse, in my opinion, than cops without accountability are citizens who defend that. This is a democracy still, to a large extent. What kind of a gutless coward defends police who commit crimes that other citizens would face punishment for? Police are citizens, no more, no less. They get paid to do a job and they need to do it properly or face the same accountability for their actions as any other citizen would.

17

One more brief comment ha then I’ll drop this.

The specific question is what Bratton should do or if he is the right one to do it.

Look at previous commissioners and you see a pattern.

The son of the last one was accused of rape. So who was sent to investigate? The NYPost of course. They ran a huge spread discrediting the woman who accused the son of the commissioner.

It kind of looks like anyone who gets that job gets it specifically because they cover their own and not because they are inclined to clean up. So it probably is going to eventually come back to the usual NY approach to bad publicity, a private commission to do what the leaders can’t or won’t.

18

Police work should not be a suicide mission. Policemen don’t have to put themselves between bullets and the citizens. They have to do everything they can, but they have the same right to protect their lives as anyone else. I have nothing but respect for those who by their own volition take the risk to save their fellow man, but they shouldn’t be required to do so by law or by the expectations of the citizenry.

19

You heard wrong.

20

One example of what people expect from honest cops.

In the 1980s I was driving a cab and was taking some guys from a hotel upstate to a ny airport. They were kind of scary looking black guys and on a throughway a trooper pulled the cab over on the pretext that I had too many people in the cab van. Have had his hand on his gun and another trooper was a ways back also ready.

The guys were a band from somewhere in Louisiana called Nathan’s zydeco chacha or something similar. I talked with them before I let them in my cab and knew everything was cool.

When the trooper pulled me over everyone knew what was going on. The guys knew “hey, we’re black, we have been partying all night, we are in a cab that isn’t local and we might get shot for it. That’s life.”

The trooper genuinely did think he was risking his life. If he stops all vehicles like that, white driver scary minorities in back, he is gonna get a hail of bullets eventually. But I respect him for doing his job honestly, being willing to take a risk that many of his colleagues won’t.

Most cops will not do something like that unless they are behind several layers of kevlar and have a few new guys between them and potential bullets. But some few will, like that trooper. He deserves his job. The pansy coward fucks who want a pile of money for hiding in a gang don’t merit squat.