Breaking Rank (55 page)

Bill Bratton had established a fine reputation as chief of Boston PD, and later as head of the New York City Transit Police, where he got rid of that all-too-familiar signature of New York, subway graffiti. (The New York City Transit Police Department was consolidated with the New York City Police Department to become a new Bureau within the NYPD on April 2, 1995.) Still, Bratton lasted a mere twenty-seven months before Giuliani sacked him. You have to wonder what more could have been accomplished were it not for the clash of those two publicity-thirsty, power-hungry egos. Bratton was, by all accounts, doing a hell of a job.

It wasn't on his watch that Louima, Diallo, and Dorismond were tortured or killed by cops of the NYPD. Nor was it on his watch that NYPD's finest, scores of them, stood by and watched several women being assaulted in Central Park during the Puerto Rican Day parade in 2000.
*

It
was
on Bratton's watch that NYPD cops got naked in the lobby of a Washington, D.C., hotel.

I was in what we in the Pacific Northwest call the “other Washington” for the annual police memorial service. One of my young officers, Antonio Terry, had been shot and killed in the line of duty. Most of the Terry family was also there, including his wife, Cheryl. A nurses' convention was being held in our hotel at the same time. When drunken, bare-ass naked NYPD (and other) cops weren't harassing the nurses, they were straddling the rails of the escalator and riding it up and down, pouring beer all over themselves, whooping and hollering into the night.

When finally someone got the drunks tucked in to bed, the rest of us hotel guests, many drained from a cross-country trip and the emotions of the occasion, settled in for a little shut-eye before the morning's service on the Mall.

In the middle of the night we were awakened and forced to parade out to the sidewalk in jammies and robes as the hotel's fire alarms shrieked—and the corridors filled with the acrid contents of fire extinguishers. Just another little prank by members of the biggest police department in the country.

The next day some of those same cops sat in the open trunks of antique police vehicles, firing rounds into the air as they raced about the streets of our nation's capital. Its humor was lost on Cheryl Terry and her family, including her young fatherless boys, Austin and Colton.

True to his nature, Bratton kicked major butt when his cops got back home to New York. He disciplined seven officers, firing two of them for the debauchery (including one known to his buddies as “Naked Man”).

More than most, Commissioner Bratton was willing to stick his face into the delinquent corners of the police culture, and capture the attention of both crooked and twisted cops. His strong commitment to integrity, and to
corruption-free police practices, was much in evidence throughout his tenure. When he stormed the “Dirty Thirty,” rounded up and arrested those corrupt cops, and melted down their tainted badges, honest police officers everywhere celebrated.

Bratton also addressed long-standing institutional problems of vague, unfixed responsibility and authority for crime fighting and problem solving. He put the onus squarely where it belongs, on
precinct commanders and field supervisors.
We police administrators like to think that we'd been holding our subordinates accountable for results long before Bratton came along. But we were bullshitting the public, and ourselves.

As police commissioner, Bratton put into practice a computerized mapping and statistics system that had been developed by his deputy and chief strategist Jack Maple, he of the homburg, when Maple and Bratton had worked on the Transit police force. “Comstat,” also referred to by many as Compstat, was a rigorous, precedent-setting internal accountability program, with an improbably unimaginative label (it stands for “computer statistics”). Modeled after successful business practices in which individual departments and managers are held accountable for meeting specific performance standards, Comstat put precinct commanders under the gun, continuously, for
results
in the struggle to reclaim New York City.

Each week, commanders were called to a meeting at the command center to present and defend their crime-fighting strategies—and outcomes—in front of the brass. They were required to describe in concrete terms the statistical picture of crime in their precinct—and what they were doing about it. Behind them, on a huge screen, were arrayed the relevant numbers: crimes by type, time, place, frequency. And in front of them? Deputy Chief Jack Maple, grilling each commander mercilessly, questioning everything. Had the commanders reached their crime reduction targets? If not, why not? And what did they intend to do about it? The precinct commanders were not judged solely on their numbers of arrests or citations, but on their outcomes. Was the quality of life, as measured by crime and disorder, improving week by week, month by month?

Like hundreds of other chiefs from around the world, I sent representatives from SPD to New York to check it out. My people came back with glowing reports, and urged adoption of the Comstat model. We considered
possible pitfalls: Comstat's potential to induce an unhealthy competition between and among precincts, fudging facts to generate additional resources, crime reduction “by eraser” (i.e, intentional underreporting). But even though there had occasionally been such problems in New York, they were immediately addressed. Some commanders quit under the pressure, some were shown the door.

We decided to create our own version of Comstat, which we tagged “SeattleWatch.” Because of our size (four precincts versus New York's thirty-four), we held monthly instead of weekly meetings. And, because this was Seattle, after all, with its penchant for process and inclusion and honoring all points of view, ours was no doubt a kinder, gentler interrogation of precinct commanders. But the principle was the same: Devolve authority and responsibility to their rightful locus—geographically based, neighborhood-anchored precinct commanders, and hold those commanders accountable for getting the job done.

Bill Bratton did all that in New York, not Rudolph Giuliani.

Bratton is now chief of LAPD, attempting to work a little Big Apple magic in the City of Angels. He's inherited a once-proud, badly understaffed, scandal-ridden, demoralized agency in a city plagued by increases in violent crime, particularly gang murders. If anyone can turn it around in L.A. it's Bill Bratton. But his experience in the East, being fired after only two years on the job, raises questions about mayoral–police chief politics—and the ability of city government to launch and
sustain
an effective, comprehensive crime-fighting strategy. Particularly one that builds improved relations with the community and fosters respect for civil liberties.

Tension between elected mayors and the chiefs they appoint are all but inevitable. Why? Philosophical differences, power struggles, “personality” conflicts. But there are ways to work around these tensions.

When Norm Rice, Seattle's first African-American mayor, went looking
for a new police chief he conducted a national search. Having recently lost out on the chief's job in San Diego, I mailed off my resume. It survived a “paper screen” that yielded eight candidates. Each of us was then interviewed by a twenty-three-member citizen panel. Next, I was grilled by the deputy mayor and other staff members. Then I was shrunk by an L.A. shrink, and backgrounded by mayoral staffers and police investigators (along with two junketeering city council members who, once the mayor had picked me, traveled to San Diego for their own investigation).

All of that time and effort would have been for naught if the mayor and I hadn't agreed on
how
to police the city of Seattle. Or if we had disagreed on our respective roles (i.e., the
decision-making jurisdiction
of the mayor vis-à-vis that of the police chief). Or if we couldn't stand each other.

I'd met with Rice several times during the selection process, but the most consequential of those meetings took place one brisk, sparkling evening in October 1993. We were on the seventy-sixth floor of the Columbia Tower in a private dining room that overlooked downtown and a huge expanse of Elliott Bay and the Puget Sound. By then, I'd fallen in love with the city. I thought I would just about die if I didn't get the job.

Norm Rice, a gregarious former TV reporter who could make his voice sound like he was talking under water, and who (privately) performed viciously accurate imitations of city council members, also had a serious love affair going with the city.

Like Giuliani, he craved safe, clean streets. But unlike Republican Giuliani, Rice, a lifelong Democrat, fiscal conservative and social progressive, insisted on
responsible
police practices to achieve those safe, clean streets. He was for gun control, against the war on drugs (or at least its excesses). He was for social justice, against racism, sexism, homophobia. He was the city's nominal and substantive leader in the creation of healthy communities, leading campaigns for libraries and literacy, low-income housing, parks, services for children, the elderly, and the homeless and other downtrodden members of society. Yet he was worshipped by the business community for his support of initiatives designed to ensure downtown redevelopment and economic vitality throughout the region.

You don't see mayors like this in San Diego, I thought. I really want to work for this guy. And
with
him. And move to Seattle.

Over halibut and chardonnay, Rice laid out his expectations for the person who would become his next chief, something he'd already done with the other finalists. “I want a chief who will take the initiative, solve problems, and get the job done,” he said. “Without needing to have his hand held.” I liked the sound of that. “But I also want a chief who understands who's boss.”