#58 Community, Race, & Arc of Policing in America: Former NYC & LA Police Commissioner Bill Bratton

What this episode is about

Bill Bratton discusses the complexities of policing in America, focusing on the roles of community relations and systemic reform in the wake of rising crime rates in major cities. He highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the criminal justice system and critiques the relationships between progressive district attorneys, police departments, and broader societal issues, emphasizing the need for effective policing strategies and reforms following high-profile incidents of racial violence.

Key takeaways

• Good policing hinges on community trust—engagement is key, not just enforcement.
• Crime spikes post-COVID show social fabric fraying; policing reforms can only proceed if society unites.
• Gun access in the U.S. is a ticking time bomb—without control, crime will remain a chronic issue.
• History shows us: quality of life policing can reduce crime; neglecting minor issues creates bigger problems.
• Bill Bratton's principles remind us: effective policing is about invisibility; success is often measured by absence.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lynn Tomman (Host) · 7 min speaking
• Bill Bratton (Guest) · 17 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 5:00 – 10:00: George Kelling

Notable quotes from "#58 Community, Race, & Arc of Policing in America: Former NYC & LA Police Commissioner Bill Bratton"

• And Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lynn tomman welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with Bill brat he has led the Boston Los Angeles and New York City police departments he is the only person ever to lead the police.

  about Bill Bratton · at 0:21

• Look like what is the broken windows theory of policing and what do you think of it the term broken windows was first used by George Kelly and Jim Wilson in the 1982 Atlantic…

  about George Kelling · at 5:16

• Starting to see these patterns and Trends developing when I came to New York in 1994 working with the late great J ja Maple who I first met as a lieutenant and the Transit…

  about J. J. Maple · at 10:22

• What we're all trying to figure out right now it's literally I'll use the Expression Common Ground favorite book of my was by Anthony Lucas Common Ground talking about the…

  about Anthony Lukas · at 17:37

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Bill Bratton — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions
  Primary interview subject discussing what good policing looks like, causes of rising crime, community trust, and reforms after George Floyd’s murder.
• J. J. Maple — Person · Referenced collaborator / NYPD leader · 2 mentions
  Bratton credits Maple as a key partner in developing CompStat in NYC, highlighting accountability, intelligence-led deployment, and management reform.
• George Kelling — Person · Referenced expert / policing theorist · 1 mention · first at 9:22
  Cited as co-originator of the “broken windows” concept and as an advisor during the Giuliani-era NYC policing approach discussed by Bratton.
• Anthony Lukas — Person · Referenced author · 2 mentions
  Bratton cites Lukas’s book 'Common Ground' as influential for understanding racial conflict and finding shared civic solutions—mirroring his “common platform” theme.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lynn tomman welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with Bill brat he has led the Boston Los Angeles and New York City police departments he is the only person ever to lead the police departments of America's two largest cities he is chair of the president's Homeland Security advisory Council and also author of the book The Profession I'm looking forward to finding out what he thinks good policing looks like why he thinks crime is up in many major cities and what reforms he believes are

0:57 needed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd Welcome Bill and thanks so much for our conversation today and thank you also for your service as a policeman and as police commissioner thank you pleasure to be with you in your audience throughout your career Bill you've rejected the idea that crime rates are driven up or down by larger societal and economic forces police you have said are the deciding factor and after years of declines violent crime is rising again in New York Los Ang Angeles and elsewhere why do you think that is that's the subject of great debate among politicians on the left and the right among police leaders among academics Community leaders many representatives from the many movements in the country my own perspective is that some of it is Corona virus related court system effectively shut down throughout the country for a year our criminal justice system which had been fraying in the

1:58 year before that in terms of a significant number of progressive District Attorneys coming into office who were seemingly at times working against the police instead of with them legislators in many states and communities that were passing a lot of Criminal Justice Reform laws some of which were intended to reform the behavior of police some of which were intended to reform bail reform systems that needed to be reformed those were factors we also have the history of this country and its love of G 400 million guns which are getting easier to acquire rather than more difficult to acquire we just cannot seem to get our act together on how to control the gun problem in the United States and in this past year those guns have often times been in the hands no matter how they've been acquired in the hands of gang members so so much of the violence you're seeing in the United States at the moment is primarily in

2:56 minority communities which unfortunately have so many of the major gang problems in our country most of the victims are minorities also so in addition to so many other problems that Minority communities particularly our African-American and Latin communities are dealing with poverty racism bias issues systemic racism they're also dealing with in growing crime problems particularly around the issue of shootings and murders and nobody has come up with an answer yet as we're about one year into this new virus that was building during the Corona virus but as the Corona virus is coming out of control this virus suddenly exploded on the American scene what does good policing look like good policing is something that I know in my 50 years in the profession I have always been striving for to me good policing is the idea that the communities we police that we work with and for trust us by that I

3:55 mean they will work with us to help prevent crime because police alone cannot vent it they will work with us as Witnesses they will work with us politically to support appropriate funding of police appropriate oversight so good policing is something that as policing has been evolving over the last several hundred years and as I write about in my book how it's evolved over the last 50 years is the idea that it lives up to from my perspective the nine principles of policing first written by Sir Robert Peele the creator of the Metropolitan Police in London in 1829 those nine principles are more appropriate today than they were back then first of those principles is that the basic mission for which the police exists is to prevent crime and Disorder so good policing is the idea that we are successful in preventing most crime and disorder and several of his other principles speak to if we do that

4:54 correctly we will be judged not So Much by visibility in reducing crime but in the absence of our visibility in reducing crime because we're doing it correctly we're not doing it with too much use of force too much intrusion upon the lives of the average citizen so Robert peele's nine principles for me the Bible of what good policing should look like what is the broken windows theory of policing and what do you think of it the term broken windows was first used by George Kelly and Jim Wilson in the 1982 Atlantic Monthly article it resonated with me because I've been living that experience in the 1970s broken windows refers to the idea that quality of life type of crime the so-called minor crime the victim's types of crime that we always experience whether it's prostitution graffiti the gang on the corner the public drunk anything that disturbs the order of a neighborhood is a broken window and

5:55 police only recently began to once again return to the sbit peel Edict of preventing crime and disorder the 70s and 80s we really moved away from it because we were focusing on how to respond better to more serious crime and we failed miserably in the 70s and 80s responding to Crime because it went through the roof so that by 1990 the worst crime year in American history we now Embrace a new revolutionary concept of policing called community policing the community policing was all about partnership with the community working together to identify what problems do they want us to focus on and the community clearly wanted us to focus not only on serious crime but on those so-called broken windows quality of life crime that they saw significantly deteriorating their neighborhoods and which the police when left to their own prioritization had not been dealing with in the 80s and the third element of

6:48 community policing is the idea of prevention once again returning to a s robic peel to prevent crime and disorder we had focused on responding to crime and measuring our success in the 70s and 80s on response to it we started to move toward under the community policing the idea of measuring our success on how much crime we were preventing and we got very successful with it in the 1990s and in New York City overall crime went down by 2018 25 straight years by 80% homicides down by 90% so broken windows is an essential element of what police have to deal with because it's the majority what people dial 911 and dial 311 they have police address when you first became head of the Transit Police for the New York City Transit System crime was really high in the Subways how did you reduce crime interestingly enough crime was high and it was about 70 incidents a day by 70 incidents I'm talking about serious crime muggings

7:50 occasional unfortunate rape 20 some odd murders in 1990 in the subway this is in a city of New York where there were 2,243 murders and five th000 people shot in the streets but the Subways were used every day by four or five million people so what happened in the subway was basically impactful on all of those people versus what was going on in the streets often times is only impactful in certain neighborhoods so the Subways were the lifeline of New York City they always have been and anything that goes on there is magnified as chief of the transer police in 1990 I was brought in to deal with a problem that had been growing in the 70 and 80s and making the Subways seemingly less safe and in reality not safe so ridership was declining dramatically we turned it around by focusing not only on the relatively small amount of serious crime that was happening your chances of being the victim of a crime a serious crime in

8:46 the Subways were about one in 100,000 on the streets was probably much closer to one in a thousand or one in 10,000 but we focus not only crime but on disorder the fair evasion the aggressive Beggars the hom Hess 5,000 homeless living in the subway getting them moved out of the subway into shelters on the streets and it worked it was the beginning of the so-called New York crime reduction Miracle it was so significant in the sense of its impact that roody juliani noticed it as he was campaigning for mayor and it led to my being appointed as his first police commissioner with George Kelling and others coming in as advisors to the Giuliani Administration on how to deal with crime and disorder at the same time and that had been the big mistake in American policeing we've been dealing with only crime and not paying any attention disorder we focused on both we began to see dramatic declines in both you created compat

9:43 which showed a geographic map of crime how did so-called rapid response policing work and was that successful comat was a system that I had first developed but not under that name in Boston in the 1970s I began mapping crime in the precinct I was working in I put up big maps in my office and in the GU room where the officers could see them they were covered with plastic acetate each night my clerk would put on that map little dots different color dots indicating different color crimes and very quickly you could see hotspots developing clusters three four five times in an area so the officers knew when they were assigned areas they were starting to see these patterns and Trends developing when I came to New York in 1994 working with the late great J ja Maple who I first met as a lieutenant and the Transit Police when I sheif of Transit I appointed him as my Deputy Commissioner of prime control

10:36 strategies he working with my chief of Patrol and then ultimately chief of Department Lou animon created what was called the compstat system which was modeled many of effects after what I had been doing in the 1970s in Boston had four elements timely accurate intelligence gather up all your crime statistics as fast as you can rapidly respond to those emerging p PS and trends that you could see because you were mapping them thirdly what effective tactics could you use to stop them to prevent them from expanding and lastly Relentless followup the idea just because the problem seemed to go away you wanted to keep going back keep mapping to see if in fact it was beginning to emerge again it was also a great accountability system because it forced Precinct commanders to appear before the headquarters Command Staff each week and discuss what was going on in their Precinct what were they doing

11:31 to prevent it did they need assistance from other outside resources to deal with it and it was a great tool for me to identify great talent in the department and others who had less talent and so it allowed me to put Mountain pegs and mount holes Square pegs and square holes good crime fighters in the precincts good administrator people where they could do the most good think of it from a medical perspective and my book The Profession I do a lot of medical comparisons so the comparison to comat what a doctor does do think of it you notice something on your skin that's troubling you think it might be cancer you go to the doctor timely accurate intelligence he does an exam and what does he tell you well you have a basil cell that he wants to treat timely accurate intelligence rapid response either freezes it or he might have to basically cut it out thirdly if it has advanced with Stage which more

12:23 significant he might have to use radiation might have to use chemo might have to even use more extensive Sur surgery and then lastly after he has effectively dealt with the cancer he wants you back every six months to make sure it's not coming back so comat in many respects parallels good medicine it's good policing and it's good medicine in both instances it takes very good care of people let's talk about racism you have said that the killing of George Floyd was murder how do you see the police the killings of young black men and systematic racism what changes do you think are needed at a Time in America there was systemic racism in American placing you only have to go back to Jim Crow sth and the various laws that were enforced for 100 years after slavery supposedly ended many Northern cities the facto segregation was reinforced by police activity but systemic racism has really not existed

13:22 for a number of years in the American police profession does it still exist in some departments possibly does it ex exist with certain officers certainly but it is not widespread that's my belief in the profession or in departments the leadership of American policing has come a long way has had the behavior of police the death of young black men at the hands of police police every year take several thousand lives during the course of their duties in the course of making 10 million arrests a year those deaths usually occur when people are resisting arrest for whatever reason about a thousand of those deaths involved usually gunfire about 18 African-American men unarmed men are killed every year in the United States by police out of 10 million arrests about half of those arrests of African-Americans so the number of deaths considering the number of arrests and the resistance to arrests and the

14:21 number of police in the United States almost 700,000 police statistically the number is small but in our society today with the Advent of social media with the Advent of cameras everywhere an event that number of years ago would have passed unnoticed except in the community or the state where it occurred is now seen nationally and internationally in an instant after it occurs so that the video lives forever and the video is repeated over and over again so something that happened in Ferguson Missouri the death of Michael B effectively ended up impacting the whole United States and accelerating the whole issue of racial reform racial Justice Criminal Justice Reform police reform so when I talk about the issue I recognize that it is a significant issue but that in many respects statistically numerically it is significantly misrepresented and not fully understood how do you reduce the killings of young black men and others

15:26 one through good leadership good supervision much better training that we've been doing a much better job of training officers the use of force has been going down fairly dramatically in the United States the level of incarceration has been going down fairly dramatically in the United States by way of specific example let me point to New York City New York City in the mid 90s had on average 22,000 people in its jails today that population is down about six to 7,000 if it's even that high why because the crime rate went down so dramatically over 25 years state prison population where the most violent people go and the vast majority of people in state prison are there for violent crime that's down by about 40% arrests by the New York City Police Department are down by the hundreds of thousands uses of force are down dramatically in terms of on average over the last several years New York City

16:18 police officers have engaged in gun battles there 36,000 New York officers in gun battles less than two doen times a year use their firearms less than 50 times a year and on average you've been taking fewer than 10 lives a year compared to the 1970s when there were almost 900 shooting incidents a year with an average of 50 people a year being killed so this is once again with the statistics misrepresented not fully understood are presented in ways in which they with this expression statistics more statistics and damn lives you can often times make statistics make the case for the case that you want to make but in the case of debts at the hands of police shooting incidents we do a much better job of accounting for those part of what's hoped for in the George Floyd bill that's working its way ultimately hopefully out of the US Congress will be the creation of national standards for the tracking of debts by American police

17:19 ironically the most accurate tracking is being done by The Washington Post so some of the statistics I was just giving to you were in fact from The Washington Post as they've gathered the most The Last 5 Years how do you increase Community Trust especially trust by the black community in the police isn't that what we're all trying to figure out right now it's literally I'll use the Expression Common Ground favorite book of my was by Anthony Lucas Common Ground talking about the racial disturbances in my home city of Boston that I lived through in the 1970s as we desegregated as schools and public housing I write about it in my second book collaborator Parish in today's Network world the idea that a leader in this case many leaders from the various communities political entities and police entities need to find a way that we have a common platform that we can seek to get as many people as possible on to with the idea

18:16 of what are the goals we're trying to accomplish in this case how do we improve Community Trust in the police police Effectiveness police standards and practices and nobody is going to get everything they look for often times everything they're looking for is flawed in any event but by trying to get us all together to see each other to see why we have the positions we have to see why we're making the recommendations we have to effectively do what Congress was basically in our constitution intended to do which it has been failing to do miserably for the last number of years it's supposed to be a debating entity where they find common ground and come to consensus on legislation we need to find some way to come to consensus on what is the best way to deal with racism in this country particularly racism and the belief of its impact on so many things in this country that we basically hold up as the strengths of our

19:11 democracy nobody has come up with those Solutions yet there's many great ideas but it's like a Rubik's Cube so the idea of taking all these ideas and blending it to we finally put the puzzle together and unfortunately we've been trying to do that for decades I talk a lot about about that in the book The many issues we face in the book The Profession but you have a long way to go to basically finally put that Rubik's Cube together where it makes sense how do you know if you're successful from a community perspective we have several ways one of the best is polling in the sense of and we do a lot of that second is getting out there meeting with the community and have been doing 50 years you can usually tell if they're happy with you if they're not happy with you so you effectively have to you have to be there polls help but nothing is better than actually being in the community to see it touch it and feel it what is it that

20:07 people don't know or would find surprising about the police there's a tremendous amount there so much on television about the police drama movies films series reality shows most American people because they never really interact with the police officer really don't know much about how police work one of the things that is entirely confusing to people people they think of us in this monolithic sense there's 18,000 police departments in 50 states 3600 counties and thousands upon thousands of towns and Villages and that they all operate differently under different policies procedures state laws and the public doesn't fully understand or appreciate that and it makes it very difficult trying to explain why police do what they do when they do it particularly when there's a crisis before I ask for the three takeaways that you'd like to leave the audience with today is there anything else you'd

21:00 like to mention that you haven't already discussed no I think I very much appreciate this interview which touched upon many of the issues that I raised in the book and I appreciate that because in the book I intended it to be Memoir certainly introduced a lot of very interesting people with a lot of interesting ideas but I also wanted it to be a tutorial on many of the issues of the day stock question Frisk qualified immunity implicit bias systemic racism and you've raised some number of those questions in in style and I very much appreciate that so one of the takeaways certainly is that everybody should always be learning remember the Glen Gary Glenn Ross play about the salesman and they will always be selling ABS well American public I would hope they would always be learning and in this time of stress between police and the public always be trying to learn more about the police and so we

21:51 can all see each other better than we have done in the past and what are your other two takeaways one is the idea of optimism I'm an optimist I'm a profession that's known for cynicism but I'm an optimist and I'm an optimist because I've seen great success with many of the ideas that I've been able to bring into the profession and the ideas that so many others I've worked with that have brought in and we were having great success up until 2018 and 19 we need to take a close look at what went wrong and how do we fix it going forward and I'm an optimist that we in fact can fix it 1990 nobody thought thought we could really do much about crime in America and we did something about it for our whole history nobody has thought we could do much about race issues and we are so much farther along than we were and still a long way to go but I'm an optimist that those two issues police Improvement and dealing with the issue

22:45 of race they're joined and you can't solve one without the other and fortunately a lot of people are very interested at this time in doing something about both and your last takeaway last take way is that I'm excited about the 21st century that is so much right now in terms of tensions political issues around race problems around the world but we are so much better informed than we were although the problem is now that creation the internet social media people are much more biased in many respects the United States is so significantly divided maybe more so than any time in our history since before the Civil War but if we use the mediums correctly that are able to convey information my takeaway is that we can use something right right now is causing us so many problems and that's the ability to communicate with each other so easily and so instantly that we can figure out how to deal with the many

23:43 frustrations and tensions and issues that we have been dealing with That's The Optimist of me thank you Bill for our conversation today thank you also for your service as police commissioner and I very much enjoyed your book The Profession Thank you very much it's was great being with you and with your audience if you enjoy today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new Fresh weekly episodes be sure to sign up for our newsletter at 3 takeaways

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#58 Community, Race, & Arc of Policing in America: Former NYC & LA Police Commissioner Bill Bratton"?

Lynn Tomman (Host), Bill Bratton (Guest).

What is "#58 Community, Race, & Arc of Policing in America: Former NYC & LA Police Commissioner Bill Bratton" about?

Bill Bratton discusses the complexities of policing in America, focusing on the roles of community relations and systemic reform in the wake of rising crime rates in major cities. He highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the criminal justice system and critiques the relationships between progressive district attorneys, police departments, and broader societal issues, emphasizing the…

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

4 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Bill Bratton, J. J. Maple, George Kelling, Anthony Lukas. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#58 Community, Race, & Arc of Policing in America: Former NYC & LA Police Commissioner Bill Bratton"?

The episode runs 24 min; the transcript is about 4,207 words in 26 timestamped sections.

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