HIS
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS
ARE REAL
WHILE LEGACY IS MIXED
Bill Bratton
leaving NYPD for private consulting firm after
31 months in
DeBlasio Administration
TAGS:
NYPD, COMMISH BILL BRATTON, NYC & THE POLITICS
OF
POLICING, OPINIONS VARY, MIXED LEGACY BUT REAL
PROGRESS,
OFTEN POLARIZING TO THE PUBLIC AS WELL
AS
TO THE RANK AND FILE, CHIEF OF DEPARTMENT JIMMY O’NEILL
(Sunday August 7, 2016 1PP, NYC)
New York City is one of the most celebrated and unique cities on the face of
the planet; it is the United States’ most famous, city, the number one tourist
destination worldwide for the 17th year in a row. It is the Safest Big City in America and has been for over a decade. It is a city of international renown, a cosmopolitan
urban center of diversity and extremes, dreams and possibilities, the good, bad
and ugly coexist shoulder to shoulder and somehow in all its complexity it
works. It is the world center for
fashion, entertainment, finance, media and the arts. It is I many ways a country unto itself. The Great Metropolis is the home of the
country’s, if not the world’s most elite urban Police Department: The NYPD is
the “gold standard” by which all other Law Enforcement Agencies are compared
and measured and they continue to remain in a class by themselves. The men and women of the NYPD are the most
professional, best trained, and most prepared for any circumstance and contingency. Its Specialized Bureaus, Commands and Units
possess unparalleled training, experience, and expertise. The 34,000 members of the NYPD keep law and
order in the city of 8.5 million residents as well as the thousands who come
into our City daily to work, visit, travel and otherwise take advantage of all
we have to offer.
Given the nature and status of
our City and Police Department, it is easy to understand how difficult the
position of Police Commissioner can be. New
York City is probably the most political city in the country. Everything here has political implications,
ramifications, special interest groups on all sides of every issue, a wealth of
competing voices of varying virtue clamoring for attention. It is this wild mix that adds spice to the
melting pot while complicating virtually every aspect of life here from the
most mundane to the most prominent. The
modern Office of the Police Commissioner requires its inhabitant to be as much
a maven of urban policing as an astute politician able to navigate the shark
filled waters in City Hall, One Police Plaza, and the thousands of small
interconnected, seamlessly conjoined neighborhoods; the ethnicities, racial
composition, multitude of religions practiced, languages spoken, customs and
traditions observed that collectively constitute our City. It is, to make a gross understatement, a
difficult job. It can often be a
thankless job because our population of 8.5 million means there are at least 8
million critics. For all the scrutiny
the Police Commissioner is subject to by all factions of the populace, press,
and politicos, he is also evaluated on a continual basis by the very men and
women he nominally commands. These are
perhaps his greatest critics.
After serving as the Police
Commissioner for the last 31 months, Bill Bratton announced last week that he
will be stepping down in September to pursue a position in the private
sector. His surprise announcement
garnered the usual amount of coverage and commentary and has been the fodder feeding
discussions in precinct houses and Cop bars across the five Boroughs. Bratton, like most Commissioners leaves no
room for ambiguity; you either love him or hate him; one would be hard to find
a Cop who is ambivalent about any Commissioner but with Bill Bratton in this
his second tenure as NYPD Commish, there is no middle ground.
The New York City Bill Bratton
returned to serve in 2014 was a vastly different place then the one he left in
1996 due largely to the effectiveness of the strategies and tactics he’d
implemented during his 1994 to 1996 term under Mayor Giuliani. Not without critics and controversy, his
employment of “CompStat” and patrolling methodology based on “The Broken
Windows” theory was precisely what the City needed in 1994. So effective were those methods that the NYPD
was able to take on new challenges particularly in the post 9-11-01 era under
Ray Kelly.
Upon his return to NYPD
Bratton soon realized that his mission would be more challenging in many ways
serving in the Administration of a “Progressive Liberal Mayor” who had made
campaign promises to every special interest group, voting bloc, minority
community, activists, and agitators of every stripe that would prove nearly
impossible to meet even in the most superficial manner. Bratton was forced by
Mayor DeBlasio to be more of an active politician than he’d ever wanted or
cared for. After a very rocky start
which we were never shy about reporting on in this space (and ultimately led us
to be banished to FB jail for several months because of a cowardly rat bastard’s
complaints). It took the better part of
his first year in 1PP to gain his footing but once he did, he was able to
arguably direct the Department effectively although often his popularity among
the MOS was dismal. Such is the plight
for the person who occupies that Office.
Perhaps Bratton’s greatest
contribution to the NYPD will manifest itself in the Department’s future. As his hand-picked replacement Bratton tapped
the Chief of Department James O’Neill. Chief
O’Neill has been with NYPD since 1983 and at every level during his impressive
assent from a patrolman to the upper echelons and now the Commissioner’s Office
has been characterized by his honesty, integrity, fairness and innovative
thinking. He is by all measures an old
school “Stand-up Guy”, a “Cop’s Cop”. We
wish him nothing but the best when he takes over for Bratton in September. Indeed, one of Bill Bratton’s last decision’s
as Commissioner may prove to be his choice of Chief O’Neill as his successor.
Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2016 © All Rights Reserved
Copyright Brooding Cynyc 2016 © All Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment