A New York tale

Since 2000, a steady stream of British politicians has travelled to New York to learn how it transformed itself from America’s murder capital to its safest big city. The lesson the Conservatives took from their “grand tour” was that good police chiefs, accountable to an elected mayor, could reduce crime through innovative policies—hence the bill now before parliament to replace police authorities (a mix of elected and appointed officials) with a single elected official. This person will have New York mayoral-style powers to hire and fire police chiefs, set budgets and try to improve value-for-money at a local level. It is a radical bill and, at a cost of £50m per election cycle, it is also an expensive gamble. Why? Because there is simply no evidence that the American model automatically delivers better policing.

For much of the last century, the New York police department suffered from endemic corruption and antagonistic relations with minorities. And the background to New York’s policing “miracle” is a violent crime epidemic that began back in 1963. Under a democratically accountable system that rattled through five mayors and ten police chiefs, the murder rate peaked at 2,245 in 1990. In 1983, with the support of Manhattan’s chief of detectives and district attorney, I set up a police/prosecutor unit that used intelligence to identify and incapacitate the most violent drug gangs. Despite its great record, this unit could not make a major dent in the overall level of violence until the police department adopted a coherent strategy to tackle all types of crime. Or, as the district attorney often said, “the elephant has to lead the parade.”

The election of a tough former prosecutor, Rudy Giuliani, gave New York its ringmaster. In 1994, he hired a remarkable police chief, Bill Bratton, to ride that elephant. Bratton revolutionised policing by combining sound management techniques with new tactics developed by academics and practitioners innovating on the hoof. He empowered precinct commanders to innovate; gave them information and manpower; and rewarded or demoted them based on a single target: crime reduction. He revoked an anti-corruption policy that had forbidden patrol officers to make drug arrests even when crimes were going down before their eyes. He focused cops on low and high-level crime. This worked, in part, because career criminals do both. Arrests for stealing a ride on the subway yielded guns, drugs and fingerprints linked to serial rapists and murderers.

Yes, Bratton was hired by an elected mayor. But his success was far less to do with democratic accountability and much more down to Bratton’s individual talents. After two years the mayor, who had interfered with Bratton’s operational independence, fired him—because he was stealing the limelight. Giuliani’s next police chief delivered fealty and further crime reductions, but police brutality scandals caused public confidence to plunge. And his third police chief was his former driver, a detective promoted beyond his capability who is now serving a prison term for tax fraud and perjury.

Bratton then headed west, to take over the Los Angeles Police Department, a basket-case force. There he repeated his magic, replacing the old guard and working with Mayor Villaraigosa (another strong personality), the city council (each of whom, according to Bratton, acted like little mayors) and the board of commissioners, whose five unpaid citizen members oversee the department and nominate and dismiss police chiefs.

What Bratton’s bi-coastal experience reveals is the need for more robust checks and balances than offered by the bill now before Britain’s parliament. As they stand, the proposals would put far too much power in the hands of a single individual. Although the bill gives a limited scrutiny function to crime and justice panels, these are toothless tigers compared to New York’s city council, which is accustomed to flexing its muscles and has the resources (including lawyers) and compulsory powers to look into any aspect of policing. The city’s formidable prosecutors, who are independent of the mayor, use their investigative mandate—not part of the remit of Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service—to deter City Hall and police cover-ups. New Yorkers can obtain judicial redress for police misconduct or negligence more easily than in Britain; over the past decade, the city has paid out nearly $1bn in such damages. If there is a pattern of violations, a judge can impose a monitor to force the police to put their house in order, as has happened in Los Angeles. Libel laws are also more liberal than in Britain—journalists cannot be sued for defaming a public figure unless malicious intent is proved. Hence the New York tradition of honest cops blowing the whistle on corruption.

In short, a bill that vests oversight of the police in an elected politician, unrestrained by robust checks and balances, is an invitation to abuse of power—the opposite of what the government intends.

And is this radical change really necessary? Post Bratton, 66 per cent of Los Angelenos express confidence in their police—good, but not as good as Haringey (my local authority), a deprived London borough with a 34 per cent minority population. Here, 70 per cent of residents think the police are doing a “good to excellent job.”

Could British policing be improved? Absolutely. Strip out the bureaucratic clutter imposed by Whitehall and beef up accountability to police authorities with more visibility, which already have in-built checks and balances. With Ipsos/Mori polls consistently reporting greater public confidence in the police than in elected officials, this is a more conservative solution—but perhaps a wiser one.