NYPD Chief Bratton Defends Vast Inequalities In New York Arrest Data

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said the reason black and Hispanic New Yorkers are arrested at much higher rates than their white peers for minor offenses is because minorities are the ones committing the crimes.

The New York Daily News recently compiled statistics on who is arrested most for crimes like bicycling on the sidewalk, having an open container of beer or spitting on the street.

Dismantling the Myth of Bill Bratton’s LAPD

The return of William Bratton as New York’s top cop raises questions about how far reform of stop-and-frisk laws will go. Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has extolled the incoming chief for implementing “constitutional” stop-and-frisk policies during his Los Angeles tenure.

Stop right there and frisk Bratton’s Los Angeles record. It’s not what you might think.

The LAPD’s current inspector general, Alex Bustamante, is combing incomplete data from the LA Bratton era, 2002–09, but certain facts are clear. Violent crime declined in LA during those seven years. Bratton achieved his stated goal of “freeing” the LAPD from a federally imposed consent decree. Public opinion toward the LAPD rose to favorable levels in the African-American and Latino communities. But the numbers on “stops” (LA terminology for stop-and-frisk) point towards racial profiling and a possible ticking time bomb.

New Police Commissioner Same as the Old Police Commissioner

If there were any lingering fears that the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York City would usher in an era of communist revolution beholden to black nationalist interests, the news from this morning should quell such concerns. From The New York Times:

    Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio was expected on Thursday morning to name William J. Bratton to lead the New York Police Department, according to two people with knowledge of Mr. de Blasio’s decision.The move will return Mr. Bratton to the helm of the nation’s largest force at a time of historically low crime rates and a deepening rift between officers and the public.

Bratton’s Endorsement of Stop-and-Frisk

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has named William J. Bratton his Police Commissioner. In returning to the job he held under Rudolph Giuliani in the nineteen-nineties, Bratton will be in charge of fulfilling one of de Blasio’s most prominent campaign promises: to end the stop-and-frisk tactics that were such a prominent part of Michael Bloomberg’s record as Mayor.

But Bratton’s views on stop-and-frisk may be considerably different from those of his new boss. In May of this year, I profiled Shira Scheindlin, the federal judge who presided over the class-action lawsuit that challenged the N.Y.P.D.’s stop-and-frisk policies. In the course of reporting that piece, I interviewed Bratton, and we discussed stop-and-frisk in some detail.