The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (36 page)

I informed Mayor Menino I was going. By currying favor with the White House, I said, we were advancing the interests of the city of Boston and its police department. As a Democrat, he agreed.

With an elected mayor in office, getting that clearance might have been next to impossible. The opportunity to appear beside the president on the national stage is political gold and would have been co-opted in a flash. Mayors, always eager to ingratiate themselves with their constituencies, understandably want the anticrime platform and major crime-fighting ideas for themselves. But with City Hall in a state of flux, we had a rare opportunity to deal directly with the White House, and we jumped at the chance.

There were several speakers in the Rose Garden that day, and by the time my turn came, I dispensed with rhetoric and went straight to the heart of the matter. I implored Congress, “This time, let's get it done. The American people need this legislation. Let's get it done, and let's get it done now.”

The next morning, as I approached the entrance to the Sumner Tunnel, the kid I bought newspapers from every day saw me coming and pointed to the
Globe
. “Hey,” he said, “congratulations!” There I was, in color, over the fold, at the podium in the Rose Garden with the president and vice president and attorney general of the United States in the background. Wow!

When the crime bill passed, Boston received significant federal funding for its initiatives. President Clinton had succeeded where his Republican predecessors had failed. He had responded to America's need for a strong federal initiative to deal with the country's growing crime problem. I also opened a relationship with the White House that would otherwise have been impossible to obtain. Joan Brody did a terrific job.

Maple, Linder, LaPorte and I were sitting in Florence's, a favorite restaurant in the North End, on election night, November 1993. The polls had closed. My driver, Quion Riley, came in. “Who won?” I asked.

“Menino won.”

“Who won in New York?”

At that point, the race between Mayor Dinkins and Rudolph Giuliani was still too close to call.

My interest was more than idle curiosity. There was speculation that if Giuliani was elected, I might be asked to come back as police commissioner. I had met Giuliani once and discussed the transit turnaround, but
I had no inside information. Still, something was stirring. I had my dream job, but I found myself once again attracted to New York.

Despite the fact that Tom Menino would not become full-time mayor until January, in one of his first acts he announced he wanted undated letters of resignation from all department heads on his desk. He got every one but mine.

I had been appointed to serve out the remaining two-and-a-half years of Mickey Roache's term. I had a little less than two years left, and I felt it was in both my best interests and the best interests of the institution of the police commissioner not to concede. Around six o'clock Friday night, LaPorte got a call at the office from Menino's chief of staff, Peter Welch.

After some small talk Welch said, “We didn't get your letter.”

“You're not getting a letter,” LaPorte told him.

“You know, every department head has submitted one.”

“The police commissioner's got a five-year term. Statutorily, he serves that term.”

Mayor Menino and I were obviously getting off to a rocky start. That was unfortunate, because I am very much a team player and had every intention of working with and for Mayor Menino, who I respected, while protecting the validity of the police commissioner's five-year term.

A few days after the election, I got a call from Howard Wilson. Giuliani had won and Wilson was responsible for reaching out to potential mayoral appointees. He was rounding up candidates for the position of police commissioner and told me the mayor-elect was very interested in having me apply. I told Wilson I wasn't particularly interested. When I had interviewed for commissioner under Dinkins, I had been a superintendent. I was now commissioner, and I had additional concerns. Cheryl, a lawyer, was actively pursuing a judgeship. I had tried living in New York on a similar salary and had found it difficult. I was within eighteen months of eligibility for a 50 percent pension from the BPD, and Cheryl and I were in the process of renovating a house in Boston as part of complying with the residency requirement of my position as police commissioner.

Apart from these not insignificant personal considerations, I was also very concerned about the interview process. I was simply being offered the opportunity to apply, not the guarantee of being accepted. I was the newly appointed Boston Police Commissioner, a job I was thoroughly enjoying, and how might it look if I applied for another job and didn't get it? What loyalty and authority could I command within my own organization if I was ready to trade it for one chance in ten at the next job that came along?

Wilson told me I was highly regarded and well along in the process.

After a series of phone conversations, he invited me to come down and meet informally with the group of Giuliani insiders who made the influential recommendations concerning the mayor-elect's most important appointments. As long as it was understood that I wasn't formally applying for the job, I agreed. I expressed my concerns about the tremendous damage that could be caused if news of my appearance leaked, and he assured me that not only the contents of the meeting but even its existence would be kept strictly confidential.

We arranged for me to fly down late one weekday afternoon and return the same night. I drove myself to the airport. The idea of being police commissioner of New York was certainly appealing. The prestige was considerable, the work challenging, the payoff when I succeeded extremely significant. Boston was my hometown, and I loved it; I loved the Boston Police Department. But New York also offered its own unique set of professional challenges. New York was Broadway, the Big Apple, and the job of NYPD commissioner was the Broadway of policing, the most complex and challenging police job in America. It was difficult not to be interested or excited.

At the shuttle terminal, I was almost at the metal detector when I said to myself, “I can't do this.”

I didn't know Giuliani from a hole in the wall. I had earned the job I'd wanted all my life. Great challenges still lay ahead for me in Boston. No matter what Wilson said, I didn't have a lock on the New York job. They had shown no signs of budging in terms of salary. Cheryl's career was blossoming, and while she put on a brave face, she really didn't want me to go. Why was I upsetting all this? For the first time in my career, why not enjoy the satisfaction of a quest achieved?

I drove straight to Cheryl's office in East Boston. “I'm not going to do it,” I told her. “We've got too many considerations. It would mean upsetting your career goals and being apart, and I just don't think we should.” Although she had said all along that she understood what an important job this was and would support whatever decision I made, I could see the relief on her face. I felt relieved as well. Now I could concentrate even more strongly on Boston.

I called Wilson and thanked him for the invitation. “I appreciate being considered, the job is certainly tempting, but I've thought it over,” I told him, “and it's not for me.”

I found out later that the
New York Post
had a photographer waiting at La Guardia Airport. Their sister paper, the
Boston Herald
, would have shot
me coming back at Logan. So much for confidentiality. I don't know for certain whether there was a leak from within the Giuliani camp or if the
Post
has ace reporters, but there are two shuttles servicing Boston to New York and the
Post
had both my airline and my arrival time. Had I been discovered actively seeking the job, my hand would have been tipped. I had been placed very much on the hook and only by luck had I wriggled off.

With my name out of the running, I kept reading in the papers that several others were under consideration. I had no way of truly knowing how the selection process proceeded, who was for show and who was for real. I can't say I wasn't curious, but for several weeks I went about my business.

Maple was beside himself when I told him of my decision. His real reason for coming to Boston was to be in a position to lobby me to accept the NYPD commissioner's job if, as he expected, Giuliani offered it to me.

He and John Linder began conspiring. The Mollen Commission was investigating the depth of NYPD corruption. Maple knew Judge Milton Mollen quite well. “Judge,” said Maple, “I think he needs a little push.” Mollen called me saying, essentially, “What do we have to do to get you into this?” and we went back and forth for a few days.

The plot thickened. Howard Wilson called again. They had done more homework and were considerably more serious about encouraging me to take the job this time. I got the distinct feeling from talking to Wilson that the mayor felt I was the guy he needed. I had already proved I could succeed in New York, I had visibility, Howard told me I had stature, it would be a coup to entice me from elsewhere. But that was window dressing. The main question was: Could I get the job done? The new mayor had campaigned on the issues of crime and quality of life, and he thought I could be the man to help him. Giuliani understood that I had my own police-management ideas that I brought with me wherever I went. Wilson asked if I would care to meet alone with him and Adam Walinsky, now a Giuliani adviser, to discuss the possibility further.

Rather than applying, I was being recruited. It was clear to me that this time there was a job offer at the other end. I agreed to talk with them at Walinsky's home in Scarsdale, New York, on the day after Thanksgiving.

Cheryl and I drove down with my friend Bob Johnson and his wife, Sandy. Bob runs First Security Services, the tenth-largest private security company in the country, and had been a mentor, confidant, and good friend for a number of years. When I had returned to Boston he had served as a trusted adviser and member of my kitchen cabinet and had even
created a Police Foundation, modeled after the one in New York City, to raise funds for the Boston Police Department. The Foundation's first donation was used to buy ten bicycles to create the department's first bicycle unit, which made its first arrest, a drug dealer, while peddling back from the ceremony announcing its creation. Throughout the process, Bob was always available to me as a sounding board.

They dropped me off at Walinsky's beautiful old farmhouse, and after a nice lunch we sat on his sunporch and talked. Walinsky, a protégé of Robert Kennedy, was a longtime advocate of the Police Corps, an organization he had proposed to train college students to become temporary police officers, along the lines of the Peace Corps. He was a one-man band on the subject, editorializing in
The
New York Times
and keeping the idea alive in Congress.

Wilson, Walinsky, and I talked for about an hour and a half. They wanted to know what I would do to turn the NYPD around. Giuliani had been elected largely on the issues of crime and quality of life. People in New York were feeling increasingly unsafe and threatened and the newly elected mayor had made it his priority to reduce crime and make them feel better. How would I live up to that promise?

I outlined my basic policing premises, beginning with the Broken Windows concept, and included the ideas that had been developed successfully in Boston and with the Transit Police and were at the time being implemented at the Boston PD. I also discussed the need to completely reengineer the NYPD. They asked me what I would need to take the job, and I explained my concerns about choosing my own team and resources, and my personal needs in salary and benefits.

At around four-thirty, Wilson excused himself for a few minutes. He came back and told me, “I just talked to the mayor-elect, and he asked if you would be willing to come into the city to meet with him. Quietly. Now.”

So there it was. I was bypassing the selection committee and going straight to the top. I said I would be pleased to meet with the mayor. After I updated Cheryl and the Johnsons, they decided to drive back to Boston without me.

We drove to the midtown Manhattan offices of Wilson's firm, which Giuliani was using to conduct some of his interviews. At around seven in the evening, the mayor-elect came through the door. He had a nice way about him, very warm and gracious. In close quarters, Giuliani can be quite charming and ingratiating when he wants to be. He thanked me for
meeting him on such short notice and said he admired my work in transit. My approach had worked in the subways, but he wanted to know once again, would it work in the streets. I said, sure, it's the same thing. What had gone on below ground had been a coordinated effort; the cops had been motivated, equipped, energized, and directed, while the Transit Authority had cleaned the graffiti and the station managers had helped control the environment. To reduce crime in New York, I said, we would do very much the same thing: motivate, equip, and energize.

But the cops weren't the only ones to be held accountable, I added. We needed the Parks Department to clean up and change the appearance of the city, we needed the Transportation Department to deal with graffiti, we needed the commissioner of consumer affairs to work on regulating the peddlers. We needed the district attorneys and Corrections onboard. What was required was a coordinated government effort. The new mayor didn't need convincing—that's what he already had in mind.