
He’s a tough Boston Irishman whose confidence has always been off the charts.
He’s been police commissioner in Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
In Boston, he was awarded that department’s highest award for valor.
In New York, he led from the front. He ordered his men to go into harm’s way. He, with Mayor Giuliani, guaranteed historic reductions in crime, and then delivered on it, fueling the sustained renaissance of New York City.
In Los Angeles, his third major act, he did it again. All major categories of crime went down significantly under his watch.
Bratton’s methods are scientific. He was an early proponent, and exporter of the Compstat program, which relentlessly tracks all categories of crime down to the neighborhood level. Resources were quickly moved from one area to the other as needed. There was a reduced emphasis on catching criminals per se, but more on stopping the crime from being committed in the first place- an essential distinction.
This didn’t mean condoning any brutality, or any unnecessary violence. While the NYPD was achieving massive reductions in crime, they actually fired their weapons less every year.
London, and England have this week seen widespread riots, vandalism and looting. This has been a severe shock to the system to Britain and to it’s friends around the world. All won’t agree on the causes, but many agree that the response of the Metropolitan Police in London has been inadequate and reactive.
It is reported that Bill Bratton will soon accept a position as a consultant for the British government and/or police.
Bratton said he believes British police need to focus on quelling racial tensions by collaborating more with community leaders and civil rights groups. He also said social media sites can be a useful tool for law enforcement trying to monitor gang activities.
In NY, he met with everybody. In LA, he met with the gangs. But all as part of a strategy.
“The idea is to get ahead of the violence rather than just react to it,” he said.
There was a zero tolerance approach to crime and civil unrest in NY and LA and it bore immense dividends.
It doesn’t sound like he’ll have an executive position in the the UK. But this is one consultant that every cop and politician ought to listen to.
The zero tolerance approach to crime and unrest has proved highly effective throughout the US. If implemented in the Britain, it will work there too.
In Los Angeles, Bratton again displayed a politician’s deft touch with the city’s diverse communities while showing his formula for knocking down crime rates was portable: When Bratton left the West Coast in 2009 after seven years on the job, crime in the nation’s second-largest city had dropped to levels not seen since the 1950s.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/08/12/general-britain-riots-bratton_8621236.html