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De Blasio Appoints Former Top Cop Bratton To Resume Post

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William Bratton, formerly top police brass in New York, Boston and Los Angeles, has been tapped to reassume his former post as NYPD police commissioner.
William Bratton, formerly top police brass in New York, Boston and Los Angeles, has been tapped to reassume his former post as NYPD police commissioner.
In choosing former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s police commissioner, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has chosen William Bratton to reprise his former post in a different era and also to work for a different political party, as Giuliani was a Republican.

Bratton will find a different New York City awaiting him when he resumes the post then when he stepped down from the position 17 years ago. To begin with, crime statistics are down significantly. When Bratton first assumed the commissioner post back in 1994 the city has reported 1,946 homicides for 1993. The alarmingly high murder rate and accompanying crime rate  were the police commissioner’s, and the mayor’s, primary issue to contend with in policing the city. On the contrary, there have only been 307 murders in New York city in 2013 thus far and the city there are fewer than 200,000 violent crimes as well, which the Wall street Journal reported to be “one-third of what Bratton faced at the start of his first tenure.” Additionally, the shift has gone from violent crime to counterterrorism measures.

The selection of Bratton, according to Crain’s New York, was “a natural choice.” As Crain’s explained, Bratton has not only run the police force in New York under Rudy Giuliani, but also did so in the cities of Boston and Los Angeles. Furthermore, Crain’s reported that Bratton “was a pioneer in the “broken windows” approach of zero tolerance for minor crimes, a progenitor of the statistics-driven accountability measure CompStat, as well as a believer in community policing, which mayor-elect de Blasio says is a top priority of his.”

But while Bratton is supposed to represent a new era of policing he steps in at a time when the city’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy has drawn fire and is currently being determined at the Supreme Court level. This does not bode well for either de Blasio or Bratton, as Crain’s reported that the “number of stops soared in L.A. under Mr. Bratton.”

De Blasio has countered the concern by saying that stop-and-frisk, “must be done fairly, it must be done compassionately, [and] it must be done consistently.”  On a contrary note, de Blasio’s mayoral campaign was based in a message of  “ending the era of stop-and-frisk,” and promised that Bratton could carry out that promise as commissioner.

Democratic assemblyman Dov Hikind celebrated the appointment of Bratton in a press release that said, “William Bratton has a distinguished record. He played a key role in the 1990s in New York, bringing law and order back to our city. His reputation for working with communities was impeccable and our community is delighted to have him back at a time when crime is becoming a concern again.”

He added to his praise the following remark: “Personally, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather see in this position.”

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