Dear Reader,

As you may know, this week I interviewed the former commissioner of the New York City Police Department (NYPD), Bill Bratton, about his new memoir which doubles as a meditation on policing. It’s called The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America. I find myself still digesting both the book and the conversation.

It’s a work worth reading, wherever you are on the debate spectrum when it comes to reforming law enforcement. It is sober and smart and, in many places, nuanced rather than strident. A different kind of police chief might have written a different kind of book, a polemic or a manifesto or a self-monument. This is none of those. Even if you happen to disagree with Bratton on some or even all of his points, it is worth grappling with his views. He is, after all, arguably the most successful police chief in modern history, a man who has led the police departments of Boston and New York and Los Angeles and then New York again.

But one of the most memorable and important observations Bratton makes is not specifically about policing; it is, rather, about institutions and people and, as such, has general application.