Preet Bharara:

From Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Do black lives matter?

Bill Bratton:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Is there systemic racism in America?

Bill Bratton:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Do we all have biases?

Bill Bratton:

Yes, certainly.

Preet Bharara:

That wasn’t very hard, was it?

Bill Bratton:

It was pretty easy actually.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Bill Bratton. Often called America’s top cop, Bratton has led the police departments in Boston, Los Angeles and New York twice. Bratton is one of the most prominent voices in American law enforcement. I worked with him closely when he was on his second tour of duty as commissioner of the NYPD and I was a US attorney for the Southern district of New York.

Preet Bharara:

He’s out with a timely new book called The Profession, which is both a memoir about Bratton’s life and career and a commentary on American policing and its challenges. Bratton joined me on Tuesday for a conversation hosted by the Streicker Center at temple Emanu-El in New York.

Preet Bharara:

We talk about the state of American policing in the wake of the George Floyd murder, including the debates around stop and frisk, broken windows policing, and the defend the police movement. That’s coming up, stay tuned. Reminder folks, the third episode of Now And Then, our new podcast hosted by Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman is out.

Preet Bharara:

Subscribe for free and listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now let’s get to your questions. This question comes in an email from Melissa who writes, we now know that Trump directly pressured his acting AG to investigate his election fraud conspiracy theories. It’s disturbing, but I guess not surprising.

Preet Bharara:

Does this change anything legally for Trump? Well, thanks for your question, Melissa. It’s a good one. I don’t think it materially changes anything for Trump. We have known about this kind of thing. There’s more detail as provided in emails obtained by CNN, which I will describe in a moment.

Preet Bharara:

The fact that Donald Trump and people around him were bringing pressure to bear on members of the Justice Department and other folks to try to bring lawsuits or maybe prosecutions and investigations in connection with what he thought were fraudulent elections in multiple states in the country in 2020 is unethical, immoral.

Preet Bharara:

Goes against the law, goes against the facts, goes against reality, but I don’t know what exposes him to criminal exposure. The one caveat I will mention though is all of that goes again to building the case that would happen on January 6th, the insurrection was something intentional on the part of Donald Trump.

Preet Bharara:

And every bit of evidence that shows that what Donald Trump wanted more than anything else in the world was to cause election results to be overturned or election results not to be certified is part of the potential “case” against Donald Trump. Will such a case ever be brought? It seems unlikely, but it remains to be seen.

Preet Bharara:

But I think it’s worth reiterating what some of this activity was that Melissa asks about. And by the way, unlike with someone other matters that get reported in the press, this is not speculation. This is not third-party hearsay. This information comes from emails sent within the department of justice itself during the transition period after the election.

Preet Bharara:

And I don’t say this a lot, but some of this is pretty shocking. You have one example, Kurt Olson, a private attorney reaching out to an official at the Justice Department on December 29th requesting a meeting with the top official there, the acting attorney general. Jeffrey Rosen say he could show up on an hour’s notice.

Preet Bharara:

And he attaches to his email to the department official the draft complaint modeled after a Texas Supreme Court lawsuit, by the way, that failed, hoping that the US Justice Department would bring a similar action. And he writes in the email, I find this astonishing. “The president of the United States has seen this complaint and he directed me last night to brief AG Rosen in person today to discuss bringing this action. I have been instructed to report back to the president this afternoon after the meeting.”

Preet Bharara:

So that’s a proclamation that the president of United States himself was ordering him to talk to the president’s own attorney general about a matter of personal to the president to take sides in an election, to bring a lawsuit that had already failed elsewhere. That’s not good stuff. Here’s another one.

Preet Bharara:

Corroborating prior reports that the chief of staff to president Trump, Mark Meadows, was engaging in his own pressure campaign. Among other things, Meadows tells the Justice Department there are allegations of signature match anomalies in Georgia. And then there’s my personal favorite, Meadow sought to have the acting attorney general arrange a meeting between the FBI and a Giuliani ally pushing a particular conspiracy theory.

Preet Bharara:

The conspiracy theory was what? That Italy was using military technology and satellites to somehow change votes to Biden. And there’s more craziness along those lines. What’s really telling is the reaction of these high-level department officials, all the way up to the acting attorney general, who by the way, were handpicked by that White House.

Preet Bharara:

They are astonished, concerned and not moved to action. The emails show that after Rosen received a YouTube video link about the Italian satellite conspiracy, he’d forwarded to the acting deputy attorney general Richard Donahue, who responded “pure insanity”. And there are multiple emails in which Donahue and other officials say they are not acting on anything.

Preet Bharara:

They’re not setting up a meeting with Giuliani. They’re not giving them time. That’s not just anybody waving off these silly and treaties and unethical and treaties. It’s people that they put in power in the first place. Now to go back to your original question, does it change anything legally for Trump?

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know that it does, but I think it’s serious. It’s important. And we should get more transparency and clarity as to how much of this went on, what the reactions were. Members of the house are calling for testimony from people in the department, including the former attorneys general on this matter and on other matters.

Preet Bharara:

And I think that should proceed. This question comes in an email from Cliff. What should we make of the news that the Manhattan DA’s office is nearing the end of its investigation into Allen Weisselberg? Do you think he will flip on Trump?

Preet Bharara:

Of course, Cliff, you were referring to the CFO, the chief financial officer of the Trump organization, Allen Weisselberg, who’s been rumored to be under investigation for quite some time by people in the Manhattan DA’s office, which is investigating the Trump organization. Famously and notoriously recently came into possession of Trump’s tax returns and tax documents.

Preet Bharara:

One thing that shows is that the immediate speculation upon the reporting, the grand jury, especially grand jury had been convened meeting three times a week. That initial speculation was that perhaps this was the end game with respect to Donald Trump himself. And that evidence was being presented to the grand jury for potential charge against Donald Trump himself.

Preet Bharara:

And now appears that they are one or two steps away from that. All the reporting and the evidence, and sort of the sense that I have about what’s going on with the DA’s office and the grand jury is that they’re building a case that they think is strong against Allen Weisselberg for the purpose of getting him to flip, cooperate against other people.

Preet Bharara:

And since Allen Weisselberg is so high up in the organization, that other people or person is likely to be Donald Trump. Do I think he will flip on Donald Trump? I’ve talked about this question many, many times over the years. I do see commentators from time to time say with some certainty and assurance that he will, or he’s likely to.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know if that’s the case. I think what’s interesting here is he clearly is not ready to flip yet. His mind needs to be changed. Sometimes you have instances, in my own experience, where the moment an FBI agent shows up or a DEA agent shows up or a police detective shows up, the person realizes the game is up. They’ll flip immediately.

Preet Bharara:

I recited an example of a case in my book where insider trading target flips on the spot and wears a wire I think that very night or the next day. And then at the other end of the spectrum, and I’ve overseen cases like this too, you have someone who is approached, doesn’t flip. Investigated, doesn’t flip. Charged, doesn’t flip.

Preet Bharara:

Goes to trial, convicted, doesn’t flip, even though they had information to give on other people higher up in the food chain and they go quietly to prison for a period of years. Where on that spectrum is Allen Weisselberg? I don’t know him personally. One factor that’s important is he’s been loyal for decades to the Trump organization, presumably to Donald Trump himself.

Preet Bharara:

That doesn’t mean he won’t flip, but it doesn’t mean he will. The other thing I think is kind of interesting in the reporting in this great article in the New York Times that talks about all this is that it looks like the case they’re trying to build against Allen Weisselberg, according to the New York Times, is based on failure to pay taxes on various generous fringe benefits.

Preet Bharara:

Including the provision of an apartment to him and his family, the provision of cars, specifically Mercedes Benz’s and tuition for his grandchildren. There’s no mention in the article, but the article could be incomplete depending on who the sources are.

Preet Bharara:

What’s missing is reporting of allegations that they might have or evidence they might have against Allen Weisselberg that he himself is involved in whatever bad conduct they ultimately hope or expect to charge Donald Trump with, if there is such evidence.

Preet Bharara:

Instead, it seems to be the side business of failure to pay taxes on fringe benefits, which also confirms that they really seem to be set upon putting pressure on Weisselberg to flip. So we shall see. Stay tuned, there’s more coming up after this. My guest this week is Bill Bratton. He’s led the police departments in Boston, Los Angeles, and New York city.

Preet Bharara:

He rose to national prominence as commissioner of the NYPD in the 1990s when he oversaw a historic decrease in crime. He was later brought back for a second go around in 2014. Bratton’s new book, The Profession, tells the story of the many reforms that he has championed over the course of his career, but it also addresses the current debates about systemic racism and policing, the defund the police movement, and how to bring policing back from this moment of crisis.

Preet Bharara:

On Tuesday, I spoke with Bratton about all of that and more at a book event hosted by the Streicker center in New York. Hello commissioner.

Bill Bratton:

Hey, how you doing Preet? Good to be with you and all of the guest.

Preet Bharara:

It’s great to be a guest at the Streicker Center. Sorry, we couldn’t be in person. I want to say at the outset, congratulations on your book, The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race and the Arc of Policing in America. As you can see, I have a lot of yellow post-its in the book. So we have a lot to talk about.

Preet Bharara:

And I should also say at the outset, I miss working with you. Maybe not everyone appreciates that we overlapped for a time when you were commissioner at the New York city police department and I was the United States attorney. And we always got along great, and it was a great working relationship and I miss that time very much.

Bill Bratton:

Those were better times.

Preet Bharara:

In some ways. Let me ask you a question. Do you think cops will like this book?

Bill Bratton:

Well, first of Preet, I’m not used to being questioned by a federal prosecutor. Do I need a Miranda warning before we begin?

Preet Bharara:

You’re not getting one.

Bill Bratton:

I’m not getting one, okay. So we know the ground rules then.

Preet Bharara:

Yes.

Bill Bratton:

Sorry, what was the question please?

Preet Bharara:

Do you think cops will like this book?

Bill Bratton:

I would hope they would because it’s about them. It’s about a journey that I took for almost 50 years with them as one of them, as a leader of them. And there’s a lot of cop stories in here. There’s a lot of stories about a lot of great cops that many of whom you work with and know New York cops, Los Angeles who the audience here would not be familiar with. But in some respects, it’s a cop story.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think there are things in this book that Progressive’s will like? Whatever that means.

Bill Bratton:

There’s something in this book for everybody that… I’m a centrist, I’m not a Democrat. I don’t have a Republican. My goal is as a centrist to try and get everybody onto common ground to see each other, to understand each other’s perspective and then see if we can work together.

Bill Bratton:

So the progressive label for a long time in policing, I described myself as a progressive, but in recent times that term has really indicated somebody pretty far over to the left. And as a centrist that I don’t think of myself as way over to the left, that’s for sure.

Preet Bharara:

But you do consider yourself to be a police reformer, which is interesting. And you say early on in the book, something I think that’s very important. You say, “Among the cops and their union, there’s a widespread belief that all police reformers are anti-police. This is wrong-headed, I’m a police reformer.

Preet Bharara:

And I defy anyone to call me. anti-police”. When you were running the 35 different police departments that you ran over the course of your career, I lose track of the number, did you use the language of reform? What was the reaction if you did?

Bill Bratton:

I constantly used the language of reform because policing is always reforming. It’s one of the beauties of it is not stagnant. It’s always moving forward sometimes quickly, sometimes solely, sometimes begrudgingly, but it is always moving forward. So where we are today in 2021 is nowhere near where we were in 1978 when I first came into the Boston police department as a patrolman walking a beat.

Bill Bratton:

The changes have been phenomenal, exciting. Many of those changes I helped to lead. Many of those changes, people who I worked with helped to create. And it’s been an exciting career, if you will, and a lot more excitement to come in the 21st century.

Preet Bharara:

So there are a few things I want to begin with, and then we’ll talk about some of those reforms and talk about some things that you stand by and how your thinking has evolved and how policing has evolved over your long career. So I’m going to ask you three questions. Yes or no answers, those are the grounds rules.

Bill Bratton:

It sounds like a prosecutor’s-

Preet Bharara:

Those are the ground rules.

Bill Bratton:

Those are the ground rules, okay.

Preet Bharara:

You answer each of these questions in the book, but I want to ask them of you so that we can talk about the broader point. And I think this is very important. Question number one is, do black lives matter?

Bill Bratton:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Yes. Question number two, is there systemic racism in America?

Bill Bratton:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Question three, do we all have biases?

Bill Bratton:

Yes, certainly.

Preet Bharara:

Now that wasn’t very hard, was it?

Bill Bratton:

No, it was pretty easy, actually.

Preet Bharara:

Pretty easy. And you talk about in the book, the evasiveness with what some people answer do black lives matter, and they don’t want to say yes. And it’s a yes or no question. I think you say only a bigot would answer that question equivocally. Why is it so hard for lots of folks, including people in law enforcement to answer those three questions that I think are pretty fundamental with a simple, yes?

Bill Bratton:

I think it reflects the complexity of our lives today that people are so concerned about being labeled in the way they answer. And the simplicity of a yes or no is very frightening to a lot of people because they want to follow that yes or no up with an explanation. So they have answers, not misconstrued. And so it just reflects the complexity of the times we’re in.

Preet Bharara:

There is a more complicated question that’s a subset of one of those questions and that is, is there a systemic racism in policing? And your answer to that question in the book is yes, but.

Bill Bratton:

Yes, but.

Preet Bharara:

Why is that your answer?

Bill Bratton:

Well, my earlier response about the complexity of responding the yes, but is there certainly among certain offices, maybe among certain departments, but not in the profession itself. Not in the almost 700,000 members of that profession. And so that’s the concern I have with the painting with a broad brush, the broad labeling, if you will, that I refuse to believe a profession that I served in for almost 50 years.

Bill Bratton:

And I think I know intimately, I acknowledge its faults. I basically certainly I’m a cheerleader of its many successes, but some of its faults is there are too many people in the profession who shouldn’t be in it. Who have racist beliefs, who have ethnic issues. And the challenge is to keep them out in the first place, or if they are discovered during the course of their time and their profession, to get them out.

Preet Bharara:

How do you keep them out? It seems like a thing easier said than done.

Bill Bratton:

Good news is that we’ve gotten a lot better at that, that the screening of candidates, particularly in larger departments, I think smaller department oftentimes it’s more problematic. But take the NYP, the LAPD, the complexity of the process of looking at an applicant is mind-boggling in many respects.

Bill Bratton:

We now have the ability to, in California, you can give lie detector tests. We also access potential offices, social media. One of the requirements when they come in is to sign off on us accessing their social media to give us all the social media that they’re up on. So that tells you an awful lot about a person’s background.

Bill Bratton:

And then the background screening now is very complex, including psychological screening. And now with a better understanding of the issues of bias, implicit bias, we can do a much better job keeping people out of the organization. And we’re developing very significant systems, tracking systems, risk mitigation systems that allow us to identify offices who, as they are exposed to the complexities of policing, maybe their attitudes change.

Bill Bratton:

Maybe they have hidden biases begin to become more evident. So we have a better chance of catching them before they come in and a better chance of catching them once they are in.

Preet Bharara:

So you just listed off a number of tools and methods and systems by which you can screen out people who should never become cops. And that sounds great, but those things have to be used. What’s your sense, as an expert on this, as to how many police departments in the country, including the smaller ones are taking advantage of that kind of technology and tools?

Bill Bratton:

Well, the devil is in the details and in the details of American policing. That is the problem, is 18,000 of them. The average police department in this country, and this would be hard for people living in New York city to understand, is between 10 and 25 offices. And we have 3,600 counties.

Bill Bratton:

We have 50 states and some numbers of territories. They all have different standards, hiring procedures, protocols, and that is one of the deficiencies in American policing. In the sense, trying to have national standards is very difficult.

Bill Bratton:

And so I’ve watched over the years as the larger departments in particular and at the state level the complexity of the hiring process has strengthened and the risk mitigation systems, risk management as we call it, the rail system in New York, the team system in Los Angeles, have really borne food over time.

Bill Bratton:

But the smaller agencies just don’t have the ability that the larger ones have. And so many of our issues are smaller agencies, case of Ferguson. Ferguson with the incident back in 2015, 2014 caused nationally verberations, is an example of a small department that had many problems that were not detected until after the event of the incident involving Mr. Brown.

Preet Bharara:

You mentioned Ferguson. One of the problems with the Ferguson department that’s been written about in at least one report is that they were largely in place to build revenue for the community, for the municipality. Which I think most reasonable people would say that shouldn’t be one of the main purposes of a police department, to raise revenue

Bill Bratton:

A great point, and that is the reality in many smaller departments that pin a lot of experience with the departments in that area of the country. And a lot of them are basically revenue generators. And unfortunately, so often that falls on the back of minorities, blacks in particular. And that is an issue.

Bill Bratton:

And that raises another issue that police under the control of government, under mayors wards of selectmen, town managers, and don’t operate independently, usually a political leadership and the laws that have passed by that political leadership. So that in the case of Ferguson, so much of the activity of that department was politically directed by the political leadership, the elected leadership of that particular community.

Bill Bratton:

And that’s something that needs to be more fully understood when we’re attacking the police or going after why they do what they do. We typically and legally have to operate with an under civilian elected control. And so much of what’s wrong with American is reflective of what’s wrong with America politics.

Preet Bharara:

Are you able to answer this question from afar, should an officer like Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd, should he ever become a cop in the first place? Or can you not answer that question?

Bill Bratton:

That’s some of the view of his background that would be necessary in the sense of a really in-depth look at his history on the department, disciplinary history, but even prior to coming on the job. The fact that he was a training officer compounds the issue, that the three officers who were with him, several of them had only been on the department several days and were assigned basically under his supervision as a, I believe he was a field training officer.

Bill Bratton:

So how did he achieve that position if in fact he was a field training officer? Which is intended to be given to officers who are role models for the rest of the younger officers on the force.

Preet Bharara:

What do you feel about the number of officers, active duty police officers who reportedly participated in the January 6th insurrection? Do they have any business being cops?

Bill Bratton:

They do not. I have strong feelings about that event on January 6th. But for the actions, the bravery, the commitment of the Capitol police, despite lack of leadership, despite lack of political support, but for their actions on January 6th, government may have come close to collapse.

Bill Bratton:

And the reason we call that event an insurrection, it effectively was an insurrection that was politically led and inspired. So it is an example with offices in that instance, put their lives on the line. And the fact that they were military personnel, police personnel, assaulting those offices, assaulting our nation’s capital, it’s disgraceful.

Bill Bratton:

So I have no empathy as sympathy for any of those that have now been investigated and being indicted by the FBI. And hopefully as they go to trial, many will be found guilty.

Preet Bharara:

I want to go back to talking about change and the things that need to change and the things that need to stay the same. You have a line in the book that you say is an old police expression that I had not heard before, but that I enjoyed very much. And you say, “Two things that cops hate are change and the status quo”. Describes probably a lot of professions.

Bill Bratton:

Those are the two things that they liked the most about…

Preet Bharara:

Prosecutors too. So my first question is you’ve been doing this a long time, and you’ve been responsible for a lot of change and a lot of reform, to use your language. And the question is at this point in the summer of 2021, does policing need sort of small changes and tweaks? Or are we still in the market for very sweeping significant change?

Bill Bratton:

I’m hoping that we’re in a period of time in which there’ll be sweeping transformational change for American policing. I think the deficiencies-

Preet Bharara:

But what have you been up to for 50 years commissioner?

Bill Bratton:

It’s an evolutionary process. From time to time it’s mocked by, and in the 70s, we had a bit of a revolution. In the early 90s, we had a revolution in our embrace of community policing and the country getting serious about dealing with a crime problem that had gone on for 25 years. 9/11 basically was another revolution.

Bill Bratton:

The evolution with American policing had to change dramatically from just dealing with its 200 year history of dealing with crime and disorder. And now swing over to taking on the issues of terrorism, something you certainly know as a prosecutor in the New York office, Southern district.

Bill Bratton:

And then the complexities of the 21st century have been a continuing revolution insures what police are expected to deal with. Cyber crime, human trafficking, all the issues that the technology world, digital world have created for law enforcement challenges.

Bill Bratton:

So we have been in an evolutionary period marked by revolution and for the last 20 years that arguably in that continuing revolution, because the profession has been changing that much and being challenged that much.

Preet Bharara:

So at this moment, we need a revolution or evolution?

Bill Bratton:

At this moment, we need, and I’ve been advocating along with many of my former colleagues, major city chiefs, we need a national crime commission to do a top to bottom review of how did we get to the mess that we’re in and how do we get out of it. Instead of doing it piecemeal, a committee here, a study there.

Bill Bratton:

I don’t know what the national aversion is to this idea of something so central to our country. So central to our government, the idea of police. And I’m not sure what that tone is that’s coming in at the moment.

Preet Bharara:

Maybe that’s the president calling about the national crime commission. Would you serve on the commission?

Bill Bratton:

He’s kind of busy right now overseas, but when he gets back, I hope one of the things that he might focus on, Preet, is just that. Because let’s face it, we’re never going to get out of the race problem without solving the police problem. The two are so intertwined and have been throughout our history.

Bill Bratton:

And I write in the book as you know that about the idea that you can’t solve the problem without us, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were significant part of the resolution of the 400 year history of race issues in this country?

Preet Bharara:

But what does that take as far as the police and race? Because-

Bill Bratton:

It takes leadership, takes courage. It takes basically finding, I use the expression common ground. One of my favorite books was Common Ground. It was a book about the desegregation of schools and housing in Boston in the 70s when I was a young cop and Sergeant.

Bill Bratton:

Wonderful book. And it is the idea of getting people with very divergent opinions and views, trying to get them onto common ground so they can see each other, hear each other, and maybe find that there are some things that they can agree on, that they can move forward on. Something that the Congress of the United States used to do, but unfortunately no longer seems capable of doing.

Bill Bratton:

But moving forward on police and race issues that it’s challenging, it’s going to be threatening to many, but it needs to be done. I think of myself as a transformative leader helping to transform policing with CompStat and with some of the other innovations that we were able to put into place, but it’s going to require a much bigger effort, a national effort, if you will.

Preet Bharara:

You mentioned CompStat, I should note. You may not remember this, but when I was US attorney, you invited me to a CompStat session.

Bill Bratton:

I do remember.

Preet Bharara:

And I’ve never seen anything like it. And it lived up to its billing, for people who aren’t familiar and you can [inaudible 00:27:24] this further.

Bill Bratton:

I wish you could have seen it back in the days when [inaudible 00:27:28] and Jack Maple that’s when it was really-

Preet Bharara:

Jack Maple, who is one of the originators of the program that’s been adopted by many police departments around the country and indeed around the world. That is fact-based, that is measurement based. That goes into granular detail, precinct by precinct, block by block to figure out where the crime is.

Preet Bharara:

But the thing that struck me, and he described in the book with some color, is what a difficult audience that is. So I remember sitting there and I’ve been in front of a lot of tough audiences, including courts of appeal and others.

Preet Bharara:

And for a police detective, or Sergeant or a precinct commander to have to present to the commissioner and all the leadership in detail about a particular robbery pattern that’s happening in the precinct, that’s quite a thing. Why is that effective?

Bill Bratton:

What’s difficult I think for most people to understand is how poorly police did in the 70s and 80s, my earliest time in policing, in literally dealing with crime. We were focused on responding to crime after the fact, how long did it take us to get to a 911 call? How many arrests and clearances did we take?

Bill Bratton:

One of the things that I think I led in American policing was the embrace of Sir Robert Peels’, Nine Principles of Policing when he created the metropolitan police in England in 1829, really the birthing of policing in a democracy. And the first principle is the basic mission for which the police exists is to prevent crime and disorder.

Bill Bratton:

Starting in the 70s, coming out of the turmoil of the 60s, please no longer focused on prevention because we were told by government, by all the experts, we couldn’t do anything to prevent crime. Society was going to focus on what they thought were the causes of crime, the economy, racism, poverty. Those were influences.

Bill Bratton:

They’re not the causes. The causes of crime are people, bad people in most instances who commit crime. So the police role is to prevent crime and disorder. And what happened in New York city and most of this audience on today New Yorkers will understand, the 70s and 80s police paid attention to disorder, is something that’s happening in the city, in this country once again, unfortunately at the moment.

Bill Bratton:

Those who don’t know the history of doomed to repeat it, and we are repeating the history of the 70s almost verbatim. And so for 20 years, we paid no attention to disorder. And as George Kelling in Broken Windows artfully pointed out, you don’t take care of the little things, it creates an atmosphere where bigger things flourish.

Bill Bratton:

And what flourished in New York in the 70s and 80s, crime in disorder. Fortunately in the early 90s, we focus back on a community policing philosophy, which echoed Sir Robert Peels. And that was the idea that community policing focuses on partnership. Policing communities share responsibility to identify what other problems they want the police to focus on with the community?

Bill Bratton:

Thirdly, as importantly, the focus is on preventing it. Nobody wants the satisfaction of having a mess made after they’ve been raped or robbed or had their car stolen. They don’t want it to happen in the first place. So it’s totally different model of policing. And where CompStat comes into the equation was it was an accountability system that held precinct commanders in New York.

Bill Bratton:

There’s 76 of those, held them accountable for, one, knowing about crime, where it was occurring, who was doing it. And most importantly, what were they going to do about it? And it revolutionized American policing.

Bill Bratton:

And for 30 straight years up until 2019, when the legislature in New York got into the picture, we were reducing crime to the extent that over that 30 year period of time, homicides were reduced by 90% in New York from almost 2200,43 in 1990 down to less than 300 around 2019. And overall crime, 80%.

Bill Bratton:

In America, by over 40%. And then like that it all began to change in 2019. So CompStat is part of that evolution that was a revolution that’s been driving a lot of our crime fighting for the last 25 years.

Preet Bharara:

So you said a lot of things there that I want to get at in a little bit more detail. First, you mentioned broken windows and that’s a term that many people interpret in different ways. You spend some time talking about what you mean by that in the book and standing by it largely.

Bill Bratton:

I’m a strongest proponent and advocate and implementer of it.

Preet Bharara:

But do you understand why in 2021, given lots of things and disparate impact on certain communities, depending on what the police approach is, and depending on what the makeup of the community is, and whether it’s a college community, or it’s a working class community in New York city, do you understand why some people have problems with the concept of broken windows policing?

Bill Bratton:

Oh, I do. It’s basically going back to the idea of seeing where they’re coming from, what they think it is, why they think its has disparate impact on a particular community. In this case in New York, whether it be the black or brown community, but broken windows-

Preet Bharara:

Doesn’t it cause you to rethink the way you thought about broken windows policing?

Bill Bratton:

Not to rethink, but actually to better explain it. And explaining it, broken windows is community policing. Why? Because it’s what the public wants the police to address. So if you look at the 311 calls that come in to the NYPD, the majority of them come in from the poor communities in the city where it brings police into the neighborhood.

Bill Bratton:

And that’s a concern by minority communities that being over police, but we are responding to calls for help. And what are so many of those calls? It’s not for the rapes and the murders and the robberies, which unfortunately, a large number of those do occur in poor communities. But they want us to deal with the drug dealer on the corner.

Bill Bratton:

They want us to deal with the out of control party at two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning. They want us to deal with the the drunk urinating on their doorstep, the prostitute on the street, those quality of life offenses that deteriorate a neighborhood.

Bill Bratton:

And I don’t care if you’re a black, Latino, Asian, or white, that nobody wants to have the neighborhood out of control where they feel unsafe. And whether you’re living on Park Avenue or you’re living over in Brownsville, you want to feel safe and disorder makes everybody feel unsafe.

Bill Bratton:

So the obligation of the police, the obligation of me is to explain what it is we’re doing, why we’re doing it, but then to work with the community. So that like a doctor dealing with a patient, what is the right amount of medicine to give to the patient to make the patient feel better? And the devil is in the details.

Bill Bratton:

[crosstalk 00:34:08] are like doctors that we each have a different patient. New York is very different than LA, and LA is very different than Washington.

Preet Bharara:

My broken windows policing, you do not mean, and you’re explicit about this in the book, you don’t mean zero tolerance.

Bill Bratton:

Not at all.

Preet Bharara:

With respect to every single possible infraction.

Bill Bratton:

Zero tolerance, the problem with that term, the only zero challenge we had going back to the 90s when that term was first used by us was dealing with… We had strategies for gun violence, youth violence, domestic violence, but we had zero tolerance for police corruption, which was another strategy.

Bill Bratton:

And you recall the police corruption of the early 90s in New York city. So zero tolerance, so it was a term that a British home secretary, a shadow home secretary, visiting New York to understand why crime was going down so dramatically, seized on that term and applied it to all broken windows enforcement and took it back to London.

Bill Bratton:

Zero tolerance is something you don’t want the police to engage in because it means that for every offense, they’re going to make an arrest. For every offense, they’re going to issue a summons. You want the office to have discretion working with this community. Can you get away with an admonition? Get off the corner.

Bill Bratton:

Do you need to issue a citation? Do you need to make an arrest? So the idea is zero-tolerance takes away from police officers discretion, and you don’t want to take that discretion away because you want that officer on the beat, that officer in the neighborhood to be able to respond to what the community wants in their community.

Preet Bharara:

So I understand what saying in part, there’s another explanation you give for the importance of broken windows policing that I think is even more compelling. And that is with respect to some low level offenses, that is the process by which officers find people who have actually committed more serious crimes.

Preet Bharara:

So there’s a disagreement between you and the Manhattan district attorney, I think about, whether turnstile jumpers should be prosecuted. You have time as the chief of the transit police. And your argument is in part, I think that when you go after low-grade crime… Some people who are committing serious crimes and violent crimes and gun crimes often along the way commit these low grade quality of life crimes too.

Preet Bharara:

And this is a way to get them out off the street or the hold them accountable for bench warrants that they may have ignored. How important is that a part of this?

Bill Bratton:

Let me give you a recent example of that. There was a devise in subway crime that once again is occurring and taking us back to the bad old days of the 90s. There were three young men who got onto the subway system. And in a short period of time, assaulted a number of passengers as the train rumbled uptown.

Bill Bratton:

In the effort to identify them, they went to the videos and they have video raised at most turnstiles. And one of the ways they identified one of the three assailants, and I think this involved a couple of knifings if I recall correctly, was a video of one of the assailants doing what? Waltzing over the turnstile. He first stops.

Bill Bratton:

He looks up and down the platform to see if he can see a cop. Doesn’t see one, waltz over the turnstile. Doesn’t pay the fare to get into the system. Back working with Jack Maple in the 90s on of chief of transit police, when we had 250,000 people a day not paying the fare, going over the turnstiles, under them, et cetera, we started arresting them because basically we needed to stop that problem.

Bill Bratton:

One out of every seven that was stopped, was found to be wanted on a warrant, already warrant for subway crime. One out of every 21 was found to be carrying some type of weapon from a box cutter up to Uzi submachine guns. Over time that fear of [inaudible 00:37:43] got so low that the MTA stopped counting it for a while because it costs more to count it than what they were saving on the fare evasion.

Bill Bratton:

We change behavior by controlling it. But we were able to adjust our enforcement up and down. Unfortunately, right now some of the prosecutors and good friend [inaudible 00:37:59], we worked in partnership on a lot of issues, the fear of fare issue is one in which if you send the wrong message, that it’s okay to evade the fare, they’re going to evade the fare.

Bill Bratton:

And who’s going to come in evading the fare? The criminals. So it’s an argument worth having a discussion about, but I think some of what’s going on in New York at the moment indeed in the country is we’ve pulled back too much on quality of life enforcement. And it basically then encourages the criminal element. Well, if I can get away with this, what else can I get away with?

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with commissioner Bill Bratton continues after this. Let’s talk about a different issue. More policing doesn’t necessarily mean more public safety, and it can come at a cost that’s not justified. And the thing I’m talking about of course is stop and frisk, or as you call it, stop, question and frisk.

Preet Bharara:

Before you came aboard for this for the second time as police commissioner in New York, I think the figure is that New York city police officers at the height in a year were making 700,000 stops. And by the time you had been in office for a period of time, what was the number?

Bill Bratton:

Last year it was 8,000.

Preet Bharara:

So how did we get to the point where we were doing 700,000 stops and it wasn’t really gaining us anything? And I understand you want to be careful about how you speak about your predecessor, although you’re not always careful about that.

Preet Bharara:

How do we get to the point where we’re measuring that’s the thing that we do to the tune of hundreds of thousands of times, and then it drops down to a tiny fraction of it, and you realize that the sky did not fall? How does that happen?

Bill Bratton:

In 1994 as police commissioner, that we began to significantly increase the numbers of arrests, et cetera, for a city that was out of control. And we increased the numbers of stop, question and frisk Supreme court case, attorney versus Ohio, sets the parameters for how you do that.

Bill Bratton:

But it was the understanding that by beginning to control behavior, we would increase like a doctor with seriously ill patient giving a high dose of arrests, summonses, et cetera. But over time, the patient would get better and we could reduce the dose, and effectively that’s what happened.

Bill Bratton:

But starting in 2002 when Ray Kelly came in, his commissioner was Mike Bloomberg, they were dealing with the catastrophe of 9/11. And Ray and Bloomberg did a phenomenal job creating a counter-terrorism intelligence entity, a lot of which you dealt with certainly during your time and our time together.

Bill Bratton:

And kept this city safe for decades against issues of terrorism. But what was not widely known was dealing with the fiscal crisis in New York, the 2008, et cetera, was Bloomberg was reducing the size of the police force by 7,000 offices.

Bill Bratton:

And commissioner Kelly understandably working for the mayor that he worked closely with, did not publicly complain about that loss of offices, but rather try to come up with other ways to police with many fewer police. 7,000 offices comes down to about 85 to 100 fewer police officers in every precinct, a huge loss of personnel.

Bill Bratton:

So we came up with a program called operation impact and that program took the 25 most dangerous precincts based on crime statistics, and each academy class, which would graduate twice a year 1000, 2000 young kids. Were then put into those impact areas and they were encouraged to be active.

Bill Bratton:

And one of the things they were very active doing was stop, question, and frisk. Problem was there were a lot of these young offices with very little supervision and overtime, whether it was being done properly or not, it began to be challenged in the courts. The black community began to raise significant concerns because the numbers were increasing.

Bill Bratton:

If the city is getting so much safer, why are we doing so many more stops? And I think commissioner Kelly really firmly believed, he and Mayor Bloomberg, that the reason crime kept going down was-

Preet Bharara:

Because of causation. They thought that doing that-

Bill Bratton:

Exactly. I did not believe that in the sense of as an observer having moved back to New York from LA. And again, to challenge that, and many others did, Zack Carter who was the US attorney for the Eastern District was questioning for example. And when Blasio ran for mayor, he was in last place in that race.

Bill Bratton:

But then he seized on the stop, question, frisk issue. And that resonated particularly with the black population. And in a small turnout election, he got elected on that issue. And people misinterpreted what he said. He was not going to stop it. He was going to reduce it even further because what had happened between 2010, 700,000 stops.

Bill Bratton:

In 2014, there were a series of court issues, court actions, a federal court decree that basically the department started reducing the number of stops. So when I came in in 2014, [inaudible 00:43:01] had been 140,000.

Bill Bratton:

During my three years, during my successor’s three years, Jimmy O’Neill, and during I think the first year of his successor, German Shea crime went down every year, even as the enforcement levels went down. Because why? The city was just so much safer that there were fewer people committing crime, fewer people evading the fare.

Bill Bratton:

It was a very different city and then it changed dramatically almost overnight. But I strongly believe that one of the things you do as a police chief, you’re like a physician. You’re constantly listening to your patient. What’s ailing you? How much medicine do I give you for that ailment? Am I giving you too much? Am I giving you too little?

Preet Bharara:

And this was an overdose.

Bill Bratton:

Like an overdose basically. So we OD’d unfortunately on that. And the shame of it because Ray Kelly and Mike Bloomberg had great support in the black community. But on this issue, they lost it and effectively Mayor De Blasio won the election on it.

Preet Bharara:

I mean, I found in my experience, this is maybe outside of law enforcement as well, if you give someone a tool, they become attached to the tool. And they begin to think that the tool, whether it’s sound or not, or whether it’s outgrown its usefulness or not, is the thing that’s allowing them to do their job.

Preet Bharara:

Whether it’s being able to charge mandatory minimums or withhold discovery until the eve of trial. Whatever tool or advantage that cops and prosecutors feel that they have, they don’t want to give up. And it’s good to see examples of these kinds of things to show that you should always be reexamining the tools you have.

Preet Bharara:

I got just a few minutes left, so I want to go into this. I found it interesting how you talk about the role of police and what the essential role of police should be. There is this debate about defund the police. I am with you commissioner on the question of whether or not, if that is meant literally. Literally defund or abolish the police. I think that’s silly. It’s a not serious at this moment in time.

Bill Bratton:

It’s not silly. It’s stupid, downright stupid.

Preet Bharara:

It is. You think of what would happen in a state of nature with no police force, we might as well get rid of our military. But on this more complicated question of on a going forward basis, what things cops should do and what things other social agencies, government agencies should do.

Preet Bharara:

There’s not that much difference between your thinking and some other people’s thinking, except as I see it in the book, a question of timing. You say this on the second to last page and ultimate page of your book. You say, “Speaking of cops, “Too few have been asked to do too much with too little, for too long.

Preet Bharara:

And it has finally caught up with us. I would divest the police. That’s a D word, divest. I would divest the police of such social service responsibilities as dealing with the homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, but only when excellent programs have been designed and are in place at agencies, specifically empowered and able to fulfill them.

Preet Bharara:

That will cost a lot of municipal money. But if it solves a problem that has expanded crime and exploded disorder, it will have been well worth the investment”. You’re not that far off from folks who think that some of these responsibilities shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of cops in the first place.

Bill Bratton:

Well, part of the reason that cops are in such trouble at the moment in the sense of the attacks upon them in the profession is that government and society have failed over the last 50 years at dealing with those issues of the homeless, the emotionally disturbed, the drug problem.

Bill Bratton:

And despite major efforts on the part of government to deal with it, it has failed abysmally. All you have to do is walk a few blocks in any street in New York, and you see that failure. And what happened as things began to fail, the safety nets that had been put in place as they disappeared. The last safety net in any society is the police.

Bill Bratton:

And over the last couple of years, that safety net has frayed because of the overburdening of that net by the explosion of homeless, the explosion of the emotionally disturbed. And shame on government that’s still closing down psychiatric beds in the state of New York, even as there is an incredible explosion in the emotionally distributed in the streets.

Bill Bratton:

The opioid epidemic, the fentanyl epidemic, they’re all expanding, and policing meanwhile is shrinking. In the late 90s, we had 800,000 police. Last year I think there was 686,000 police. And what’s happening this year as the police are being attacked and defunded, the ranks are going even smaller. So that safety net is going smaller.

Bill Bratton:

No, in terms of defund, has several aspects to it. Some people want to move the money to other agencies. All well and good if they give enough money that that agency can take on that responsibility. But I’ll make a prediction for you, it’s not going to happen. And who’s going to be the agency of last resort? The police.

Bill Bratton:

So I talk about refunding the police for the idea of better training, much more training. We are totally under-trained for the responsibilities that are expected of our young men and women today. And we also need better equipment. There’s so much more that police can do if properly supported, but government’s going to have to figure it out because that’s what we elect the government for.

Bill Bratton:

But unfortunately, as we’ve seen in Washington, they just don’t seem to be able to get their act together. And at the state level, state after state, and New York state is the prime example criminal justice reform has been a disaster by basically taking away what few powers the police have to control behavior in the streets.

Bill Bratton:

And where there’s been more of an attention focused on the defendants and the rights of defendants than on the victims. So the world turned upside down the last couple of years, and hopefully that upside down or that pendulum swing begins to go back the other way.

Preet Bharara:

I want to get to audience questions. So here’s the last question from me, and there’s a lot of things we didn’t get to cover.

Bill Bratton:

Hopefully, they’ll get the book and the answers are in the book.

Preet Bharara:

Not all of them.

Bill Bratton:

But many of them. We’re still trying to figure a lot of it out.

Preet Bharara:

Yes, but it’s a very robust book. I want to end my questions where your book begins. And you begin the book talking about the searing and horrible and tragic assassination of two good cops, officers Liu and Ramos. And I was US attorney at the time. This was just before Christmas of 2014. And I was able to attend the funeral service of officer Liu, not of officer Ramos.

Preet Bharara:

And I was very moved by how you spoke about the role of cops and how cops run towards the danger when most people run away from it. I was also struck in reading about it in the book. I don’t remember if I read about it at the time, in what you said when you arrest officer Rafael Ramos’s children at his funeral, and you talked about the issue of seeing people.

Preet Bharara:

And there was a woman you dealt with named sweet Alice previously in your career in Los Angeles, right? Who said, “You know why like you chief?” And she said, “We see you, you see us.” And you said to officer Ramos’s children talking about their dad, maybe that’s the reason for the struggle we’re now in as a city, as a nation.

Preet Bharara:

Maybe it’s because we’ve all come to see only what we represent instead of who we are. We don’t see each other. You go on to say the police, the people who are angry at the police, the people who support us but want us to be better.

Preet Bharara:

Even a madman who assassinated two men, because all he could see was two uniforms, even though they were so much more. We don’t see each other. You delivered? Those words almost seven years ago. Are we seeing each other any better now?

Bill Bratton:

I think what I hope will come out of the George Floyd murder will be the ability to, going back to your first question, do black lives matter? And basically I’m talking about black lives, not the organization. Do black lives matter? They certainly do.

Bill Bratton:

And if you see the history and you can understand why they matter. It’s the Jewish lives matters in terms of all members of that faith have been through. Every life really matters. And the idea is to try to find ways to see each other.

Bill Bratton:

And I purposely started the book with that incident to bring people in because I thought about the way it ended about the idea of seeing each other, finding common ground so we can see each other. But if we fuse to get on that common ground, we’re never going to have the opportunity to see each other or hear each other.

Preet Bharara:

Commissioner, again, it’s an honor, and a treat to speak with you. Really excellent book, I suggest it to everyone. Thank you for your service and thank you for time.

Bill Bratton:

Thank you for your time Preet. I know how valuable it is. I very much appreciate this, and to Temple Emanu-El for basically hosting.

Preet Bharara:

Yes. My conversation with commissioner Bill Bratton continues for members of the Cafe Insider community. To try out the membership free for two weeks, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. I want to end the show this week by talking about a couple of incredible people we recently lost.

Preet Bharara:

In the space of just six days, America lost two giants of the bench. On Tuesday, Judge Jack Weinstein, a federal judge who served seemingly forever in the Eastern District of New York and Brooklyn passed away at the age of 99. Widely known as an activist judge, I think that’s a fair characterization, Weinstein spent 53 years on the bench fighting for civil rights and working to change the criminal justice system from within.

Preet Bharara:

Some of his opinions were controversial. He was sometimes overturned by the circuit court, but he felt strongly about what justice meant and how he could help achieve it. He was bold and legendary, and in many ways, challenged the status quo for federal judges up until he retired just last year at the age of 98.

Preet Bharara:

I did not know Judge Weinstein particularly well personally, although I did have the honor and privilege of attending a Brown Bag lunch with him a few years back for clerks of the Eastern District of New York. The other giant of the bench we lost last week.

Preet Bharara:

On June 9th, Judge Robert Katzmann who until recently served as the chief judge in the US court of appeals for the Second Circuit died after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 68. Judge Katzmann was also no ordinary judge or ordinary person. He was kind and compassionate, cared deeply about the integrity of the law and had a profound impact on everyone around him.

Preet Bharara:

You probably haven’t heard of him, so let me give you a little bit of his background. Judge Katzmann was nominated to a seat on the US court of appeals by President Bill Clinton back in 1999. And in 2013, when I was a US attorney, he became the chief judge, a position he held until August of 2020. Bob Katzmann grew up in Forest Hills, Queens.

Preet Bharara:

One of the most diverse neighborhoods in the country with a large immigrant population in New York city. He got multiple degrees. He got his undergraduate degree at Columbia. He got a master’s at Harvard. He got a PhD at Harvard, and then he got a law degree from Yale law school.

Preet Bharara:

He was the first federal judge to hold a PhD in the study of government. And as many have noted, his study of the relationship between Congress and the courts probably gave him a leg up in understanding governmental processes in a way few others did. Throughout his career, Judge Katzmann was dedicated to the cause of immigrants and immigration.

Preet Bharara:

He was the son and grandson of Jewish refugees who fled Germany and Russia during the Holocaust. That passion and interest caused Judge Katzmann to create the immigrant law Corp in 2014, the country’s first nonprofit fellowship program designed to provide counsel to immigrants by matching them with legal aid so they could get the representation they needed and deserved.

Preet Bharara:

They represented who were detained, impoverished or at risk of deportation. Judge Katzmann and I talked about immigration many times over the years, including when I was chief counsel to Senator Schumer on the judiciary committee and considering legislation relating to immigration. In 2016, Judge Katzmann presided over the largest naturalization ceremony in the history of Ellis Island, thanks largely to the Corp program.

Preet Bharara:

I’m sure he was very happy that day. Judge Katzmann also cared deeply about civic engagement and the important role it plays in preserving democracy. In 2014, he launched Justice For All: Courts And The Community, which was an initiative to foster and understanding for the courts and the law through community and school outreach programs.

Preet Bharara:

During the pandemic, the program even made live audio streams of courtroom sessions available to the public for the very first time. In 1993, before Bob Katzmann himself was a judge, he helped move along the Senate confirmation of the late great Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and helped her prepare for the hearing.

Preet Bharara:

Ginsburg has said of that experience that she could not have been more wisely counseled. Six years later, Justice Ginsburg is the one who swore in Judge Katzmann to his judgeship. She said at the time about Judge Katzmann, “He brings an enormous store of knowledge to his new commission, along with intelligence and personal qualities important in sound judging.

Preet Bharara:

An inquiring mind, extraordinary diligence, patience, and a readiness to listen and to learn”. He was a friend to so many myself included. To clerk for Judge Katzmann, was to win the jackpot. Sure, it was a great credential and sure judge Katzmann was a feeder judge to the Supreme Court.

Preet Bharara:

But more importantly, if you clerked for Judge Katzmann or even more broadly, came across him in life, he became a lifelong mentor and cheerleader. I can’t tell you how many times I would have lunch with the judge or run into him at an event or a legal conference, and he would pull me aside.

Preet Bharara:

And what did he want to talk about? One of his former law clerks, how they were doing in the office or how they were doing in their career, generally. How he could help them advance in their career. And in some cases, how he could help them become judges in their own, right? What he cared about was other people.

Preet Bharara:

People who were close to him, people he could help, not about himself. Judge Katzmann was a wonderful judge, scholar, teacher, mentor, citizen, and person. And I don’t know a soul who thought otherwise. Litigants respected him. His clerks revered him. To the families of Judge Katzmann and Judge Weinstein, I am so sorry for your loss.

Preet Bharara:

It is also our loss. May they rest in peace, and may we never forget their service to this country. Well, that’s it for this episode of stay tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Commissioner Bill Bratton. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show.

Preet Bharara:

Send me your questions about news politics and justice. Tweet them to me at @PreetBharara with the hashtag ask Preet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24Preet. Or you can send an email to staytuned@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe Studios and the Vox Media Podcast network. Your host is Preet Bharara.

Preet Bharara:

The executive producer is Tamara Separ. The senior producer is Adam Waller. The technical director is David Tattershall. The Cafe team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Sam Oserstaten, Noah Assally, Mat Wiener, Jay Kaplan, Jennifer Corn, Chris Boylan, and Sean Walsh. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m Preet Bharara, Stay Tuned.