“Police are now being faulted for something basically our political leadership, Republicans and Democrats, have failed at for fifty years… Who’s going to have to deal with it in the meantime? Police.”
Raised in the Dorchester section of Boston, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton recounts his love of his local police station from a young age, leading to lifelong career in the profession. He worries about some of the trends emerging that remind him of his early days in New York City where graffiti was ubiquitous. Bratton cites the influence of Sir Robert Peel, the father of modern policing, who established the London Metropolitan Police Force in 1829 and laid out 9 policing principles. Bratton shares his thoughts on issues surrounding George Floyd’s death, police violence and the defund the police movement.
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Bill Bratton
38th & 42nd Police Commissioner of New York City
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Intro
2:47 - Background
5:53 - Robert Peel and broken windows
8:55 - Community policing and recent crime waves
14:02 - Criminal justice reforms
16:53 - George Floyd and the defund the police movement
24:15 - Policing recommendations
27:49 - Bill de Blasio
34:37 - Concerns around modern police policies
36:03 - Terrorism and 21st century threats
John Darcie: (00:07)
Hello everyone. And welcome back to salt talks. My name is John Darcie. I'm the managing director of salt, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform at the intersection of finance technology and public policy. Salt talks are a digital interview series that we started in 2020 with leading investors, creators and thinkers. And our goal on these talks is the same as our goal at our salt conferences, which we're excited to resume in September of 2021 in New York city. Uh, but our goal is to provide a window into the mind of subject matter experts, as well as provide a platform for what we think are big ideas that are shaping the future. And one of these important ideas, uh, and, and issues in our society today is effective policing. So we're very excited to welcome what I think is one of America's foremost experts on the topic onto the show and that's commissioner bill Bratton.
John Darcie: (01:00)
Uh, Mr. Bratton served as the chief of the Los Angeles police department, chief of the New York city transit police commissioner of the Boston police department and commissioner of the New York city police department in both 1994 and 2014. He's out with a great new book called the profession, a memoir of community race and the arc of policing in America, which again, we think tackle some of these really important topics that are going on in society today, obviously around everything that has happened with George Floyd last year, uh, and other incidences of, of, uh, police violence, but also recognizing the complexity around policing. I think it's something that, that, uh, Mr. Bratton does as well as anyone, uh, in the marketplace hosting. Today's talk is Anthony Scaramucci. Who's the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge capital, which is a global alternative investment firm. Anthony is also the chairman of salt. Uh, he's a longtime friend of Mr. Bratton as well. So we're excited to welcome, uh, the commissioner onto salt talks here today. Anthony, go ahead and take it away. Thank you, John.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:01)
And so, uh, commissioner, uh, it's great to see you. The book is fantastic. I like holding up the books of my friends. So we're going to put it up here, the profession, a memoir of community race and the arc of policing in America. And it's truly a phenomenal book. I, I, I was reading it last night. I've got some questions related to stuff in the book, but I also want to start with your background, sir, because I find it to be one of the more amazing quintessentially American stories about your life and how you developed your profession. So tell us a little bit about your background. We got a lot of young people, uh, that listened to us, uh, over 80,000 subscribers. Now tell us about your background, how you got your career started.
Bill Bratton: (02:48)
Well, I grew up, uh, in the Dorchester section of Boston born in 1947, raised in a cold water flat that's, triple Decker style housing in Boston. And, uh, uh, most of my younger life that, uh, I, uh, began to become fascinated with policing was police station down the street that was co-joined with a local library and spent a lot of time in the library. And a lot of time just watching those cops much in that building. But, uh, I didn't become a police officer till 1970. I was just, just back from Vietnam war it's your three years of the military police sent free doggy and luck and going on the Boston police was the fulfillment of a dream that, uh, the dream was to become a cop and in the 1970s, extraordinary turbulent times and Boston desegregation schools, turbulent times in our country, certainly sixties and seventies. So, uh, the book that, uh, you're referencing the profession, uh, is a memo memoir 50 years of policing since I joined it in 1970 and now 2021 in some respects, uh, it's reflective of a Yogi Berra is deja VU all over again, looking at the New York post headlines, the last couple of days about squeezy PEs in graffiti. A lot of people in New York were around back in the seventies, eighties, early nineties, but I was, and, uh, we're kind of back where we started after 50 years as it relates to those issues.
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:14)
Well, you know, I want to apply in 1989 and lived in the city. You had that intersection on 96th street leading up to, uh, the FDR drive. They always had three or four guys there, pan handling, uh, turned out there weren't that many of them. I remember that from your first book, uh, in terms of cleaning up that situation and making the quality of life in the city better. Um, you also had in your first book, uh, there was a pamphlet that used to show people about the early policing in Boston. I believe it was, if it wasn't Boston, it was something, but you had this pamphlet about how the police officers opera. Did you remember this pamphlet bill? I don't know if you remember it, but you I'll have to dig it up if you don't remember, but I was fascinated by that. I saw you give a speech related to it when you became the commissioner of the police in LA and the reason I'm bringing it up. It's okay. And you're
Bill Bratton: (05:04)
Talking about a survivor appeals philosophy. My philosophy is that actually, that's what I'm talking about. They carry it everywhere. Okay. Okay.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:14)
You see that? Yeah. So I remember that vividly from a speech that you gave, uh, I was so impressed with it and, um, I'm glad you put that in there because that was going to be all right. Maybe I've met, maybe I misspoke, but there's a linkage to your philosophy related to police conduct that goes back hundreds of years. And I want you to talk a little bit about that and then we'll get into the book. But I think it's very important because I think we're, I think what we have found is that philosophy does work. People are safer, even the people in more violent communities, frankly, feel safer. Um, but could you go into that a little
Bill Bratton: (05:52)
Bit, if you don't, uh, I go into it extensively in the book because it's a central in the garment of the book, if you will. And what we're talking about, uh, actually two concepts that are linked. One is Serabit PLA 1829 creates the metropolitan police in London, really the first uniform police service in a, uh, a Western society. Uh, and he, uh, annunciates at that time nine principles of policing and they are, if you take the time to read them and they were in the book that, uh, they are even more probably today than 1829, the first of them is that the basic mission for which the police exists is to prevent crime and disorder five most important words in policing in Western civilization, the police exist to prevent crime, not just respond to it and disorder in seventies and eighties and America, we focused on responding to crime and pay no attention to disorder.
Bill Bratton: (06:48)
The linkage of this document is to another document I think you're referring to. And that's the article and Atlantic monthly, 1982 by George Kelling in Jim Wilson called broken windows in broken windows was based on the idea that if you do not take care of minor crime, that most people encountered every day, that destroyed neighborhoods and created fear similar to what New York is going through right now. And indeed many parts of the country. The idea of the prostitute, the idea of the homeless equals the Pega, the squeegee pesto now invading New York. Once again, the good feeling that that's what people saw every day, they might read about the murders, but most people were not going to be the victims of serious crime. So the linkage from the nine philosophies and the idea to control crime and disorder to broken windows, I am probably the most formidable, uh, uh, proponent of surviving appeal, but also a broken windows that you cannot have serious crime reduction without also focusing on serious audit control of fixing the broken windows. And so,
Speaker 4: (07:53)
And so what, what happened commissioner? Because we, we, it seemed like as an observer, my business has been in new, I'm a new Yorker, less my seven years in Boston, which you and I have discussed. I'm a new Yorker. Um, it seemed like we had things going well. Uh, you started a Renaissance in New York, uh, when you were the commissioner of the police, uh, it seemed like you took some of those practices. Now we can talk about stop and frisk as well. I, I know that that's a political lead charge issue and, and I, and I certainly don't want to, I, uh, I want to overly opine on that cause I don't understand it as well as you do. I'm sure you could, you could give your opinion of it. But, but my point is we seemed like we had the city in a safe position. It feels very unsafe today to people that just, you know, certain areas, pockets of it, crime, homeless tents, panhandlers, squeegee people. So why did it devolve to where it is today and did it, did it need to devolve to where it is today? Obviously? So why did it
Bill Bratton: (08:58)
Book speaks to that change that you're talking about beginning of 1990, after the failure of the seventies and eighties crime exploding disorder exploding, the arc was a basket case, uh, 2,245 murders, 5,000 shootings in the streets is of everywhere. Uh, we embraced in policing in government, a new concept called community policing and that philosophy of policing echoed, sir, Robert Peel's in that it was about partnership with the community identifying what were the problems they want the police to focus on, not just police deciding, but working in partnership collaborations with communities in individual communities, having different priorities. And lastly, focusing on dealing with these problems to the extent that we prevented them from coming back and starting, uh, uh, Dave Dinkins. Uh, if we bound Ray Kelly, 19 90, 91, they were able to hire 6,000 more cops and began a process where crime began to go down, but it was going down so slowly that people were not noticing because a lot of the focus was not on quality of life.
Bill Bratton: (10:02)
Crime, 1994, Giuliani is elected I'm appointed as police commissioner. We embraced totally the concept of focusing significantly on fixing broken windows quality of life at the same time, developing better, more scientific ability to deal with serious crime. The comstat system, which I Jack maple, John to many Lumina Maura, so known for the NYP D. And what was the result? Well, New York city for almost 30 straight is the country for almost 20. Some odd street is so a significant reductions in crime. By 2019, we, our city had an 80% reduction in overall crime since 1990 and 90% of reduction in homicides country overall had had a 40% reduction up until 1990 to 2019. I had predicted quite comfortably confidently that New York city would never experience a crime increase again, but boy was I wrong? I was unfortunately tragically won because New York and the country in the midst of another crime way, particularly murders and shootings, and particularly impacting on our minority communities.
Bill Bratton: (11:11)
And, uh, it, it went terribly wrong in 2018, 19, and certainly in 20 do due to what combination of things, one COVID Vivus, we still don't fully understand the impact of that. Uh, but that, that the catastrophe or that, uh, not only the 600,000 deaths, but the impact on people's lives, the stresses. So we feel that that certainly had an impact on some of the crime increases that some of the deaths, if you will, domestic violence, et cetera, but in the case of New York city, where in New York state that you and I are more intimate with, but echoed around the country, there was a criminal justice reform movement. Well-intended, I'm a reformer of, in me falling police agencies for 50 years in New Zealand, New York city was probably leading the way in 2018, 19. We had everything going in our favor, but in a legislative body in Albany, uh, decided that they wanted more significant criminal justice reform and put through a well-intended, but you'll conceive terribly constructed set of reforms, dealing with bail issues, as well as, uh, um, uh, police powers dealing with a particularly minor types of crimes.
Bill Bratton: (12:24)
The BOE act was incredibly flawed well-intended, but one of the things that did not allow judges in this state to do would say allowed to do in every other state is take into consideration. If they set bail, the likelihood that this person is going to be a danger to the public, if they are released, they're not allowed to do that here in, uh, New York state. So of all the phase that will be formed, that was probably the most significant, but additionally, uh, it is so difficult now to arrest somebody and keep them in jail. And so we're seeing in the papers every day, stories of somebody who's arrested put right back out again, vested put right back out again, commissioner Shay, the police commissioner is going out of his mind with it. And Albany is still talking about movie forms, more interest in the, if you will, the, uh, criminal than in the victim. And that's what upset the applecart year in New York city blame it on Albany and they're well-intended, but terribly, uh, uh, constructed and implemented criminal justice reform. Okay. So
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:27)
Let me play the, I'm going to put my hat on. Now. I'm going to play the radical left for a second. Okay. Which obviously I'm not, but I'm going to play it here and I want you to respond to them. So they, they feel rightly or wrongly that the, the society is to blame. Uh, and they feel that so, uh, the victim is the victim, but also the criminal is a victim of the society, institutional biases and perhaps institutional racism. And so a result of which we have to be lenient, um, in these cases and your response to that is what
Bill Bratton: (14:03)
They have a point to an extent, uh, our reformer. Uh, I understand that life is not fair for many people that, uh, in terms of economic deprivation, uh, mental issues not dealt with adequately, uh, uh, neighborhood environments that offer so many, uh, awful temptations, drugs, et cetera. Uh, I understand that as a police officer, I have to understand that at the same time, you kind of excuse away behavior and the police exists to control behavior under the law. Uh, the challenge for us is to do it compassionately consistently and constitutionally, according to the law and in terms of laws and too lenient, too strict, it's not on the police. That's on the politicians who create the laws at the moment. I think in an effort to address with the laws were too strict in the minds of many politicians. They are now trying to, uh, address, uh, readdress those issues.
Bill Bratton: (15:02)
But I think they have gone, the pendulum has gone much too far to the left. We are much too lenient on the repeat offender, even taking into account the awful circumstances that they might've grown up in. And so, uh, it was a great debate raging the criminal justice report and the way each to be debated, we need to find more common ground. And I speak to this in the book about the idea of the path, the way forward the irony was, uh, uh, Anthony, we were, we were there in 2018 and 19 that we formed crime down so dramatically in the city, racial issues diminishing use of force by police in New York city at the lowest point in the history of the city. So all the concerns about too much police use of force, et cetera, it was not happening to the degree to which the far left attempts to portray it. And in some respects, some of the media jumps to portray it. Now, uh, it, we had an Etch-a-Sketch moment, 2000, 1920 around a pandemic and around, uh, the criminal justice reform in this country in the Etch-a-Sketch moment, as we kind of erased all the reforms of the last 50 years, and then let's start over. We don't need to start over. One of the things were working
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:11)
Well, I want to ask one more question related to this. I'm going to ask you where we should go and what your recommendations are, what you do put in the book. Um, and I want to, I want to touch on the police force issue. And the media is demonstration of that, and obviously the tragic incident related to George Floyd and his death, uh, the defund, the police movement. Um, I want to get your reaction to all of those things. Please force tragic death of George Floyd, and some of these other incidents that we've seen now that are caught on tape related to the, uh, police action. Uh, and then obviously, uh, the defund, the police movement. What are your thoughts on those three
Bill Bratton: (16:53)
On the three, one of the frustrations, and one of the arguments I advanced in the book and forced, thankfully as being advanced by most people discussing this issue is we have very, uh, limited statistical information, uh, to work with that. Uh, there were no national, uh, uh, uh, statistics stuff in times to address many of these issues, but let's take, it's like the probably most accurate one ironically at the moment is the Washington post, uh, study of police shootings going back to 2015. And what that shows is between 2015 and 2020, there were an average of less than a thousand police involved shooting deaths in the United States, 990 to 241 of those about 25% of blacks, blacks constitute about 13% of our population and our, that number 22 involve blacks who were armed, uh, uh, at the time they were shot, uh, in terms of the, uh, incident Mr.
Bill Bratton: (17:58)
Yap was with this Floyd, uh, he is not in this category of shooting. Certainly he was not shot. He was basically, uh, killed in another way, but also, uh, that, uh, the idea that, uh, we need to take in a context that was numbers involving blacks that, uh, 48% of murder offenders, those who commit murders in this country, uh, black in an overall population, 13. So police encounters are oftentimes involving use of force or being, uh, having force used against them involve a higher proportion of blacks. So that might explain some of that disproportionality in those numbers. There's also the idea that, uh, police use of force has been going down dramatically over the years, that, uh, in city of New York, in the 1970s, there were over 900 shooting incidents involving new actually police officers. And on average, 50 people a year being shot to death last year with 35,000 police officers in New York city, there were 26 incidents involving people being shot by New York city police officers, the majority of them in response to being shot at.
Bill Bratton: (19:06)
So look at the decline in police shootings, just in New York city and around the country. Uh, the decline is also in a very, very significant, so relative to usual use of force, it has been going down as police are getting better trained and have been reforming on the George Floyd, uh, incident, uh, that was, uh, out murder. I talk about that in the book. I think we all agree and certain that's what he was convicted off. That one individual said policing back almost 50 years, the gains of those 50 years in the minds of particularly our black population, but the tens of millions who turned out to demonstrate with them and my, our white population, Latino population clearly believe that the police have been behaving inappropriately toward minorities. And unfortunately in some instances we have, but in the case of the Floyd incident for murder, uh, it is now, uh, basically, uh, blown up to apportion.
Bill Bratton: (20:01)
The police had been set back on their heels, and it's gonna take us quite a while to recover from that damage, even though the statistics work in our favor, in the sense of showing we're using less force, that the number of these incidents is relatively small in the overall scope of things. Uh, so the George Floyd incident on the negative side is that please back on the positive side, it is in fact, uh, basically in terms of, uh, uh, for blacks in particular, it is awakened America to the incredible frustration that community has felt. And understandably, when you look at the history of how they've been dealt with since the inception of this country, so, uh, out of the negative came a positive and as we go forward, the challenge is going to be, to try find common ground that we can effectively in the sense, uh, deal with police, that we get gain trust, again, deal with the black population.
Bill Bratton: (20:55)
They feel they are being respected and being responded to in terms of the, uh, the third issue that you raised, the idea of defund the police stupidest idea ever, uh, in the sense of an everybody from the president on down now is embracing the pushback against that idea that, uh, when you're having problems with something, you don't basically take resources away from it. And please need to be refunded, not defunded. We need so much more training, so much better qualified offices, and it's going to cost money. Uh, police are supportive of the, uh, defined movement in the sense that we don't want to deal with the metal wheel. You don't want to deal with the homeless. We don't want to deal with the narcotics offender. We don't have the training or the skills, the expertise with six months of training and a police academy to deal with that.
Bill Bratton: (21:43)
Let somebody else handle it, who has more skills, but is our government a society going to be willing to bear that expense? I'll be willing to bet. No. Cause for the last 50 years of my time in policing, they have dumped it on police. Why? Because they don't have the answers. They don't have the answers for mental illness. They don't have the answers for drug addiction. They don't have the answers for homelessness. So they talk a lot about it. It's all money around without understanding how to effectively use it and who ends up cleaning up the mess, the police. And so we're now being faulted for something basically that our political leadership, both Republicans and Democrats, it feel that for 50 years and my prediction at this point in time, this inflection point is they may fail again. Because even though we're talking about spending trillions of dollars on issues in this country, how much is going to be spent to hire thousands of social workers, thousands of mental health experts, reopen hospitals and institutions for the mentally ill have meaningful drug treatment for the narcotics addicted to find homes for the homeless. Uh, it's not going to happen overnight and who's going to have to deal with in the meantime, the police. So we need more funding less because we're going to be dealing with these problems for years to come. Awesome.
Speaker 4: (22:58)
Well, I love the way you speak about
Bill Bratton: (23:00)
That. Long-winded answer. No,
Speaker 4: (23:04)
Not at all. I wanted to let you keep going because I think it's so insightful. And I think that, uh, I love the way you speak about it, frankly, we need more voices of advocacy for this sort of common sense. I think
Bill Bratton: (23:16)
That'd be good. I advocate for the police. I don't have to offend them. Some things we do, uh, indefensible, but I don't believe we need to defend the profession. I think the profession, its activities, reducing crime disorder is less something that we is speaks for itself, but I advocate for what they need to do even better. And so this is a great time to be on a soap box advocating. So I appreciate the opportunity to be on this show with you to advocate on behalf of the police, we got to do more of it. And so, and the
Speaker 4: (23:44)
Book is well timed. We've got to get this book in the hands of many people, uh, commissioner, but I wanna, I want to switch gears for a second and talk about the future. So where are we in five years in some of these cities like New York, uh, what do we do? What's your recommendation if I, if you were installed right now as our domestic polices are for the United States, uh, obviously I'm New York centric, but I mean, talk about it more broadly. What would be some of the recommendations? I know you put some of them here in the book. I want, I want you to tell, tell people what you think
Bill Bratton: (24:16)
The, the irony is that, uh, over the last particularly 20 years, but over the arc of the 50 years, they wrote about in the book, we have been progressing. We've been getting better at this. Uh, you're not gonna solve the race problems in America without basically, uh, uh, engaging the police in it because the two are so intertwined that naturally talk about in the book. And so we need to find ways of getting police close to the community. And we were doing that until the last year or two. Unfortunately the, uh, seismic change in that last year or two has been so dramatic, so profound that it's not going to take a year or two to fix it. You done did all those 30 years of reform that I was very involved in a New York city, Los Angeles so much that was wiped away in the light of the loss of trust and the regeneration of a black anger at government and police in general going forward.
Bill Bratton: (25:10)
Uh, there was no quick fix that, uh, New York city debates are being held about the mayoral candidates. Uh, that next mayor is going to basically have a tough time and who it is because these issues are not easily resolvable, but they are going to require police involvement. We are the essential reality in government, in democracy to hold it all together. We are the glue that holds it all together. So rather than abolishing us, rather than the funding us, we're going to have to effectively strengthen us, but strengthen us based on where it experiences that John chimney, the late great John too many, my first deputy commissioner, uh, great, great cop, uh, died much too young. You only had an expression, uh, something that affected, uh, those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Those, you know, those who study cops know, we don't know why history and that's so true that we don't even learn from my own past.
Bill Bratton: (26:03)
And what I've tried to do in this book is educate not only the public in general, but my own peer group, about the history of police. When we got right where we got mom, we got so much right in the last 20, 30 years, but it's been undone to the great degree. I'm an optimist. I wouldn't come to the art to take over the subways in 1990 and work with Rudy Giuliani in 1984, go to Los Angeles, the most racially torn to basis city in this country in 2002, I was not an optimist. I'm an optimist about coming out of this prices, but that optimism is in a sense, uh, uh, framed by caution in that, uh, there's so going on in this country politically at the moment that, uh, those tensions are going to impact significantly on the tensions around recent police. So what's happening externally, the right, the left, uh, uh, the, uh, Republican democratic differences, uh, if they can't find common ground to talk, it's going to make it much more difficult for us to find common ground to talk. Well,
Anthony Scaramucci: (27:07)
I think it's very well said. I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying the Adams,
Speaker 4: (27:10)
Uh, the very famous, uh, New York post gossip columnist, I read the article that you were in this weekend, uh, where she was asking you about the different candidates. Um, but I do agree with you that whoever takes that spot is going to be in a tumultuous situation. Yeah. And, you know, I think, I think, you know, this, and I know this, that the engagement rules under mayor de Blasio have changed with police officers and the homeless. And obviously that's come coming from Albany as well, but it's been generated by the Blasio and the city council. Uh, it's going to take a lot of work to reverse a lot of that stuff. If
Bill Bratton: (27:49)
We want to do that, there's an irony there. I was obliged. He was first commissioner worked with them for three years, advised him in his run up to the, uh, mayor's race, uh, a great success with him. He was supportive of survivor appeal, crime and disorder, uh, funded me incredibly well, particularly after the murder that I talked about in the book of, uh, detectives Ramos, Lou, uh, in the midst of all of the racial prices
Speaker 4: (28:17)
That was in Brooklyn of the police officer was shot through the window. It's a very controversial thing that happened. They both died.
Bill Bratton: (28:25)
And, uh, at the, uh, funeral Nulogy for one of them, I talked about the importance of seeing each other, that not, you see somebody in a blue uniform or a black face, the idea to see each other. You know, I, I had very good luck with the Blasio. Those first three years, prime went down, the enforcement levels went down. Uh, so what happened the last four years that, uh, that the wheels came off? The vehicle that I was in those first two years, I know my successes, uh, having a very tough time dealing with city hall, the city all has embraced the evil fathers to the left, uh, uh, issues that Albany is embracing. I was encountering that, but not to the extent that my successes have been having to deal with it. And I think, uh, on much too far to left to me, the wheels came off the car. And so the car is just not moving forward at the pace it was years ago.
Speaker 4: (29:20)
Well, yeah. And you talk about it, you know, it's a, it's a pragmatism it's, non-ideological, the book is really about addressing things from a right or wrong perspective as opposed to left or right. You're also racially sensitive in the book, which I admire. Um, you're, you're speaking to a 21st century audience, uh, that we want to be sensitive to, but at the same time, uh, we can't allow reckless crime or petite crime because it destroys the quality of life of everybody. And it makes everybody frightened. I was outside the garden last night and you know, I've been to him.
Bill Bratton: (29:56)
It must have been there must have been kind of touchy after the loss.
Speaker 4: (30:00)
Yeah, well, I was, I w I, uh, I was outside the garden before the game and I was outside the garden after the game. It was, uh, it was a rock night obviously, but, uh, the garden did not feel the same to me. Didn't feel the same entering the garden, uh, homeless people, obviously people with mental illness in the area around Penn station, uh, quite reminiscent of the late eighties, uh, before you took over with, uh, mayor Giuliani. And, uh, it, it, it gives me great sadness commissioner because, uh, you don't want to even see the people like that. You know, we want to figure out a way as our society, you know, we're Richard up society, where we should figure out a way to help those people as well. I'm not exactly understanding the radical less position of leaving the people on the street. I, I guess they feel that they have a civil Liberty to do that. Uh, but it is infringing upon the rights of others. Uh, we have to figure it out.
Bill Bratton: (30:56)
I didn't take care of them either because they're not being dealt with correctly for their emotional issues or drug addition. Uh, there were two boards that were very influential for me that speak to what you're talking about. One was Fred Segal's book. The future once happened here talking about the Lindsay years. And in some respects, we're repeating the Lindsey is of the late sixties, early seventies in that the era of the early seventies. We're now starting to see that in a significant wage, 2021 here in New York and seagull. Uh, basically I read that book coming into New York when I was coming in as head of the subway police. And, uh, I, I took it to heart. The second book that influences me, it goes back to my hometown where you went to school, Boston in the seventies. Uh, I never thought as a young cop Sergeant superintendent, that department that Boston would ever straighten out from this racial turmoil was that bad in the seventies, but in his book, Anthony Lucas, common ground, you will wonderfully, I think you got a Pulitzer prize for it.
Speaker 4: (31:57)
He spoke at Tufts beautifully. My senior year [inaudible] was a Boston globe columnist. The book common ground was amazing story about re knitting the cultural ethos of Boston, black and white.
Bill Bratton: (32:13)
And look at Boston. Now in the sense of south Boston, it's not the south Boston and Charlestown of the seventies. Uh, it's now a yuppie bill. Uh, Boston has a black mayor, a black police commissioner. Uh, you can add a Carson beach that, uh, we're a black did not go for fear of losing their life. Uh, it's very mixed down through south Boston. So I look at Boston, I look at Los Angeles in many respects that the changes that occurred during my time. Yeah. So that's why I remain optimistic. But this time, despite, uh, if you will, new generations who were more sensitive to the issues of race and economic disparity, uh, it's going to be difficult, uh, because we are so polarized around the politics now, much more so than we were back in the sixties, seventies for that matter into the nineties, look at the crime bill.
Bill Bratton: (33:02)
Uh, I know a lot of people don't want to pay from the crime bill of 1994, but their crime bill had the assault weapons ban a hundred thousand more cops. It had criminal justice research, drug treatment. Uh, it basically helped turn around that crime problem for the next 20 years. And trying to find that type of consensus. Now, I can still remember being with Rudy Giuliani, lobbying new Kendrick speaker of the house to support president Clinton's crime. Bill said, Hey, every Republican mayor with his police commissioner lobbying, there'll be public and speaker of the house who was basically at war with the president, but they found common ground on this issue. I'd love to see that happen with the current Congress that I don't hold out much hope for it, but it's a hope Springs eternal. Yeah, no, listen to me.
Speaker 4: (33:46)
We're, we're, we're up against it now. Hopefully, uh, wisdom will prevail and there'll be less of an ideological struggle. I've got a few last questions for you commissioner, if you don't mind, uh, do you worry as a pragmatist and an intellectual and a historian that the pendulum could swing? I think that title
Bill Bratton: (34:06)
Intellectual that's the first time that's been applied to me.
Speaker 4: (34:11)
I'll keep that one. I think that intellectual ism with that, that townie accent of yours, I got it. Okay. I, I, I get it. You know, I grew up in a blue collar neighborhoods. I tried to do the same thing, but I notice I'm still wearing my blue color, so yeah. Yeah. And you, look, you look good in it too, so, okay. So, so, but do you go, does it go too far, meaning that, do we get past a tipping point where we can't pull it back?
Bill Bratton: (34:38)
Uh, that is the risk. And at the moment, the pendulum that I speak to in the book, the arc, if you will, the bending of the spring, uh, it's still going in that direction, but there's a couple of hiccups that are occurring, uh, that, um, uh, optimistic about. Uh, it's ironic that the tragedy of crime is going to be one of those major hiccups to stop that pendulum swing people are now coming out of the virus fear. And now basically seeing that there is another virus that's been growing in America, unchecked, continuing this summer to grow on check, that's going to scare the hell out of them. Won't take the lives that the virus took, but it can have tremendous economic and racial impact on the country. So I think the pendulum is going to still keep going to that left, but it's starting to stutter.
Speaker 4: (35:29)
So, so this is my last question are then we'll tie it up, but, uh, I have to get to it because you write about at the end of the book. Uh, and it's just interesting. We have these domestic situation going on right now. Uh, but you've been battling, uh, the police local state and local police have been battling and working with the FBI and the CIA on counter-terrorism. Um, and I want you to address that for us. Could you talk a little bit about the, uh, current terror threats in your opinion and, uh, where they lurk and what we need to be doing about that through analysis technology, et cetera,
Bill Bratton: (36:04)
That, uh, one of the things that changed from American policing on nine 11 was that prior to that time, we dealt with crime and disorder. That's what I dealt with in New York on the subway, in the streets in Boston, uh, my successor, Ray Kelly, the new mayor Bloomberg, they had to deal with terrorism, American policing for the first time had to deal with this broad-based terrorist threat that, uh, Al-Qaeda referenced, uh, are created. And then come on, comes ICS. When I came back in 2014, kudos to commissioner Kelly in terms of what he built for the city of New York and extraordinarily robust, probably the most robust in the country, if not the world that kept the city safe for many years, even while he was keeping crime going down, we have different management styles like critique him on a stock question first from the book.
Bill Bratton: (36:49)
But on this issue of terrorism, you cannot fault him in the sense that, uh, he and the mayor kept the city so safe, but that's the one of the new challenges for American policing. In addition to crime and disorder, we now have the new crimes of terrorism, the new crimes of cyber, the new crimes involving drones, the new crimes involving data theft, uh, the 21st century challenges, uh, a phenomenal compared to what I dealt with the first 30 years of my career, and to address them, we are going to need, we funded police better to train police with a lot more expertise and a lot more areas. That's why the foolishness of defund the police, uh, in the, uh, the, the heat of the moment, amount of race issues. We need to refocus reform the police, but we also need to reorganize them to be more robust, to deal with the 21st century challenges, which are still out there. We're seeing all these cyber attacks. Now, some of them coming out of Russia, but if you get the ICS of the world, uh, and the [inaudible] of the world that develop those capabilities, we're really in for it.
Speaker 4: (37:53)
Well, it's a phenomenal book. You write about all those and more of there's optimism in this book, which I love, and it takes a blue collar intellectual to recognize a blue collar intellectual
Bill Bratton: (38:06)
Bills. Okay. Very good there. Okay.
Speaker 4: (38:10)
But God bless you for writing it. I look forward to seeing you soon. We'd love to obviously get you at our live events and salt. Uh, and the book is the profession and memoir of community race and the arc of policing in America by bill Bratton, bill, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. And a pleasure.
John Darcie: (38:28)
Thank you everybody for joining today's salt. Talk with commissioner, bill Bratton, talking about his new book, the profession and the arc of in America. Just a reminder, if you missed any part of this talk or any of our previous salt talks, you can access them on our website, uh, on demand@salt.org backslash talks or on our YouTube channel, which is called salt tube. We're on social media. Twitter is where we're most active at salt conference. We're also on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. Uh, and please spread the word about these salt talks. We think this issue of policing and how we can reform, uh, what is a really complex topic, uh, is very important. And so please share this salt, talk with your friends, with your family. We think it's a very important topic, but on behalf of Anthony and the entire salt team, this is John Dorsey signing off from salt talks for today. We hope to see you back here against them.