The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (2 page)

I don't know that the incident would have been treated very differently
if it had happened at a Catholic church. Giuliani felt previous administrations had backpedaled too much in dealing with many special-interest groups around the city, and he was going to put a stop to it. Giuliani saw this as purely a police-and-order issue, and he was determined to put his stamp on the city right away.

All this was in play on this bitterly cold, windy, snowy Sunday night, with the leadership of the police department still in the hands of men who for twenty years had been taught and had learned through bitter experience to respond in a very low-key, sympathetic manner to many of the city's special-interest groups—in a nutshell, never to stick their neck out.

Giuliani was not happy with the standoff. His position, basically, was: You've got criminals in there. Go in and get them.

Relying on Scott and Leake and my own sensitivities to this issue, I felt that would exacerbate the situation. No one in New York law enforcement was unaware that in the 1970s a police officer had been shot during a standoff at a city mosque, and we didn't want another seventies-style situation on our hands. I had worked for two years as transit police chief and was mindful that sometimes negotiations are appropriate.

This wasn't sitting well with the mayor. He kept calling me and Scott and Leake. “You have police officers injured,” he said. “You have stolen police property. Why aren't you going in?” It was a legitimate question, but it was asked continually. The command post was in a supermarket next to the mosque, and Leake kept getting pulled out of negotiations to talk to someone from City Hall. He told them essentially, with grace and tact, “Nothing has changed because every time we go to negotiate, we get pulled back into the supermarket to talk to you.”

The Muslims, meanwhile, had none of these problems; they weren't answering to Farrakhan every five minutes. They had a chain of command and were making decisions. We had a level-three mobilization of cops and they had a level-four mobilization of Muslims. We were being outflanked.

“There ought to be arrests tonight,” the mayor insisted. “No one is to be D.A.T.'d.” (A D.A.T. is a desk appearance ticket, known to cops as a “disappearance ticket” because most people who get them don't show up in court.) “I want arrests!”

Giuliani seized upon this incident to draw his line in the sand; here's how he was going to be different from Dinkins. He was going to be aggressive, hands-on. Giuliani would have preferred to keep everybody locked inside the building until they surrendered the people who assaulted the officers and stole the radio. However, Scott and Leake were
handling the situation masterfully. They had been field commanders for many years in the department and knew the community—were o
f
that community—and felt that the tensions were so high that to make the point that we, the police, were in charge would have raised the potential for bloody consequences.

Leake had two jobs that night; one was to catch the guys who assaulted the cops, and the other was to prevent a riot. His view was, “Let's prevent the riot first, and then we'll get down to getting these mugs. We have a description, we know where they come from. Detectives have caught a lot of people on a lot less than that. We'll get them.” I concurred.

I used the weather conditions to bring the point home to the mayor. “It's a very tenuous situation up there,” I told him. “We have a lot of police, and if we attempt to, if you will, assault the place—to go in using force—there is the potential to have this escalate. We ought to step back and allow the negotiation process to work.”

Ultimately, a deal was worked out in which Scott and an aide went into the mosque, searched the premises, and retrieved the radio and the gun. Then there was a walk-by; although many people involved in the incident had left the scene, the individuals who remained in the building were brought out in a long line so the officers who had been assaulted could make identifications and arrests. A promise was obtained from the Muslims that the next day they would surrender the people they knew to be involved in the assault and theft. The Muslims agreed, Scott and Leake agreed, I agreed, and finally, so did the mayor.

I still wasn't commissioner.

Eight officers had been hurt, and the mayor and I went to the hospital to visit the most seriously injured. The cops were very glad to see us and to hear the mayor's early comments supporting their actions. We could use the incident to get out dual messages. To the cops: I'll support you with the benefit of the doubt. To the city: There's a new sheriff in town, and we're not going to tolerate disrespect for the police.

Leaving the hospital, Miller, Maple, and I headed up to the 103rd Precinct in Jamaica, Queens, for roll call. (In the peculiarity of New York police jargon, the 103rd Precinct is not pronounced the “one hundred and third,” it is the “One-oh-three.” This is for radio purposes; the “Three-oh,” the “Three-three,” and the “One-one-three” are more likely to be understood and less likely to cause confusion over static-filled airwaves than the “thirtieth,” the “thirty-third,” and the “hundred-and-thirteenth.” By now, it's just the way cops talk.)

The 103 was a microcosm of the city: Multiethnic and multiracial, it had good neighborhoods, bad neighborhoods, and some in-between. It was Governor Mario Cuomo's home precinct, but it had all kinds of crime problems. John Miller was very conscious of New York history and symbolism and had suggested we go to the 103 because it was an example of the city being out of control. The 103 was the precinct where Eddie Byrne had been killed.

In February 1988, Police Officer Ed Byrne was sitting in his patrol car, guarding the home of a man who had informed on a drug dealer, when he was shot to death by drug dealers. It was a vicious and cold-blooded murder, and they did it to send a message: This was their turf, their world, they had the power. But massive police response to that homicide had changed that perception of the 103. We now intended to change it for the rest of the city.

I might not have told the 103 I was coming. Tradition held that before a police commissioner visited a precinct a call would be put in saying he was coming. It was a not-very-subtle message that if the commanding officer was working, he'd better be there; that if he wasn't working, he might think about working; that if he still wasn't working, then the executive officer better be there; that the broom better be taken to the place; that the girlie pictures go down and the color photos of the brass get straightened. Three parking spaces were to be cleared in front for the commissioner's car, his advance car, and his backup car. It was expected to be expected.

I preferred it another way. I was a cop going to visit a police station, no advance notice. All my advance guy would do was make sure there wasn't total pandemonium.

I walked in before the midnight shift.

It's funny about the world of police; there are the cops of the day and the cops of the night. Cops of the night are a different breed. Their uniforms tend to be a little less neat, they're a little more unkempt. They look like people who belong in the dark. As I entered the muster room of the beat-up old station, twenty-odd pairs of eyes turned to size up their new leader.

“This is my first official act as police commissioner,” I told them. “I came a long way to get here. I know you're thinking: Who's this guy who talks funny, this guy from Boston who's the new commissioner.

“It's odd that this is a department I've dreamed of my whole life. I don't know why a kid from Dorchester was dreaming of being a New York City cop, but I do remember a picture book I kept checking out of the library
that had illustrations of all the units and divisions of this department, and I know how I used to feel about the traditions of the NYPD. I want you all to feel the same way that I do.

“I said when I took this job that we would take this city back for the good people who live here, neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, house by house. But I'm going to need your help in doing that. I'm going to need all of you in the game.

“I want my cops to be cops. I want them to be assertive. I don't want them walking by or looking the other way when they see something. No matter what the old rules were, I expect you to see something and take proper police action.

“I expect you to be honest. I expect you to uphold the oath that you took on the first day. If you get into problems doing your job, and you're doing it right, I'll back you up. If you're wrong, I'll get you retrained and back to work. If you're dirty or brutal, I'll see to it that you're arrested, you're fired, and you're put in jail.

“I like cops. I've been with cops most of my adult life. I want to bring three things to this department: Pride, Commitment, and Respect. I want you to be proud of your city, of your department, and of yourselves. Proud that you're cops in the greatest police department in the world. I also want you to take pride in your appearance, in your uniforms, and in how you wear them.”

I looked out at these guys. The 103 was a good place to start in terms of improving appearances. They as much as said, You couldn't have given us an hour's notice? We could have gotten a haircut or something.

“I want you to have commitment,” I told them. “Commitment to do the job. Oh, yes, we are in for some rough times here. We've seen what the Mollen Commission found”—the Mollen Commission was investigating corruption in the NYPD—“and I'll tell you now there's more to come. It's not enough just for you to uphold your oath. When that man or woman next to you is brutal or corrupt or stealing, it is part of your oath that you just can't stand by, that's not enough.

“You all have families back home, wives and kids who depend on you. Mothers and fathers who love you.” There were two generations of officers in front of me; some were kids who went home and lived with mommy and daddy, others were men in their forties who went home to kids. “When some cop that you work with is robbing drug dealers or beating people, that puts you all in danger. Because then we're asking the criminals to be able to tell, Is that the good police coming through the door or the bad police?

“What happens when a cop gets shot because some drug dealer thought that cops weren't coming to arrest him but to beat him and rob him?”

The 103 stared at me.

“I want you all to know right now, I know what I'm asking of you, and I'll tell you what I intend to give you in return.

“If you do your jobs, I will back you to the hilt. We had an incident tonight which we're looking into. And if I find the officers acted properly—and it appears they did—then I will back them up publicly. We will be sailing in harm's way as we take back this city together.”

Miller was watching the cops. He remembers, “A third of the cops were saying, ‘This guy's too good to be true.’ Another third were saying, ‘Uh oh, this guy's going to be trouble.’ And a third were wondering which way to go.” Cops had heard the brass say they were going to get tough on cops before, but they had never heard a commissioner come in and say he was going to back them up. The old brass had come through a long police culture in which the assumption was that if there was an “incident,” the officer must be guilty, and even if he wasn't guilty, it was easier to hang him out to dry than to fight the public and the press. So the cops were listening to me and figuring, “Break our balls
and
back us up, that might not be a bad deal; we'll take that.”

I also talked to them about respect, both for themselves and for the public they serve. “We're going to work very hard to take this city back, but all our good work can be undone by one cop who treats a citizen disrespectfully,” I told them. “We have to keep the public's respect for us. If we do our job brutally, if we do it criminally, if we do it thoughtlessly, then we're going to lose the public's respect and all the good work you do will be overshadowed by the sense that we're a brutal, corrupt force. Pride, Commitment, Respect.”

Leaving the roll call, Maple, Miller, and I crammed into the back of my department-issued four-door Mercury. In the front sat my security detail, Detective Al Powlett and Detective Jimmy Motto, who was driving. There's no sight in the world quite like the New York skyline all lit up, if you stop and pay attention to it. We were in the center lane, cruising over the Triborough Bridge from Queens into Manhattan, when the digital clock on the dashboard hit 12:00. “It's midnight, Commissioner,” said Detective Motto. “Raise your right hands,” I said to Maple and Miller. We all laughed. “Okay, we're onboard now.” It had been a long day and a longer night, and as we passed through the toll booth, I was finally commissioner. Life was going to change and I was ready.

 

I had called the first meeting of the super chiefs for seven the next morning in the police commissioner's conference room on the fourteenth floor of One Police Plaza. The super chiefs were the chiefs of department, patrol, detectives, personnel, and the Organized Crime Control Bureau—the highest uniformed officials in the NYPD. These men were in place when I came into the department. Between them, they had in the neighborhood of two hundred years of police experience. I had appointed my aides, but I had not yet made any command-staff personnel changes, except for Dave Scott.