The Case Against Bill Bratton: New York City Mayor de Blasio's New Police Commissioner

Bill Bratton: NYC Mayor DiBlasio's new Police Commissioner.  While he was
Police Chief under mayor Guiliana minority communities were placed under siege
and innocent people were killed. (Photo by Policy Exchange)

By Josmar Trujillo
The first two months of the City's post-Bloomberg era have seen little in the way of "progressive changes to the New York Police Department. While new(ish) Mayor Bill de Blasio may have seen his honeymoon period come to an end with a few notable controversies in February, the once-again commissioner of the NYPD, Bill Bratton, has largely stayed above the fray as he strategically manages the media and helps steer an embattled police department through a reform storm -- one of his specialties.

Policing activists cheered last year when a federal judge ruled that the NYPD was engaging in (at least) "indirect" racial profiling and that reforms, including a federal monitor to oversee changes to the department, were needed. The idea of federal oversight, beyond the scope of City Hall, was music to the ears of many who questioned if the City could reform a police force whose reach stretched overseas. An appeal by the City would be the main obstacle to the court-order remedies.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's appeal of the Floyd v City of New York case was expected. Bloomberg was his famously unapologetic self to the very end. De Blasio, a self-proclaimed "progressive," on the other hand, promised change and accountability for an NYPD that had been trampling the Constitution for years. Some activists, perhaps, felt they had an ally in de Blasio. After 12 years of Bloomberg, expectations for Hillary Clinton's former campaign manager were informed by a sense of optimism--leading some to take "wait and see" approaches. At the end of his first month in office de Blasio and Bratton joined policing activists, civil libertarians and plaintiffs in the Floyd case to announce, to much fanfare, that he would instruct the City's lawyers to drop the Bloomberg administration's appeal...

Of course, simply not being Michael Bloomberg wouldn't suffice in putting the brakes on a growing trend of police abuse, surveillance and militarization. Substantive changes are desperately needed to relieve communities of color living in what many see as a racialized police state. De Blasio, apart from his campaign rhetoric and the media narrative, had been speaking a message of only moderate reform. So moderate that many wondered if he was serious about changing the NYPD in meaningful ways.

The Returning Conqueror

The most obvious pause for alarm for community members and activists came in December when de Blasio announced he'd be bringing back Rudy Giuliani's police commissioner, Bratton, for a 2nd run at the helm of the NYPD. Bratton is widely seen as the man who operationalized “Broken Windows” theory from an article in the Atlantic magazine into a philosophy that dominates law enforcement across the country today. His aggressive, pro-active approach, coupled with his introduction of CompStat, was the precursor to Stop and Frisk. A strange bedfellow for a "progressive" Mayor. For many who live in the front lines of aggressive policing, labels like "progressive" mean very little. Ditto for Stop and Frisk; police profiling and harassment of black and brown men is a time-honored tradition that preceded the policy. But the policy became a controversial issue the past few years and a central theme in last year's mayoral election. De Blasio's biracial son was featured in campaign ads touting his father as the only one who would "end the Stop and Frisk era."

Bratton seemed an awkward choice to fulfill that pledge. Before the appointment, he said that cops who don't do it "aren't doing their job." If you look back at Bratton's cable TV appearances, his speeches and the philosophy of his little known consulting company, Bratton Group, he has never wavered from his support of the tactic. So far he's been consistent: a few days into his second stint as commissioner, the famously media-savvy Bratton told CBS's Norah O'Donnell that policing without Stop and Frisk is like a "journalist interviewing without asking questions." In his most recent interview he said there'd be "anarchy" without it.

But New Yorkers were told that Bratton was different now than the Bratton of the past. A kinder, gentler Bratton wanted to save us from the excesses of the Ray Kelly era. Even Al Sharpton, who had famously been at odds with Bratton in the 90's, gave his blessings to Bratton at an event honoring the late Nelson Mandela. An ACLU lawyer penned an op-ed in the New York Times praising Bratton. Bratton even met with his fiercest critics when he sat down with a small group of policing activists. It seemed many were willing to watch the Bratton sequel unfold--perhaps even support it. The architect of Stop and Frisk had also, to the outrage of some, invoked King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" at a recent MLK day celebration in Brooklyn.

Then Bratton laid out some of his cards. It was reported that Bratton was looking to bring on George Kelling as a consultant. Kelling, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, is both a friend of Bratton and one of the authors of the influential Atlantic magazine article that birthed “Broken Windows” theory and laid the framework for Stop and Frisk. Activists that had been tempered in their response to the Bratton appointment were now delivering some slightly stronger language as they criticized Bratton's look to the past in shaping the NYPD's future through the hiring of Kelling.

Read More