The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (3 page)

The police commissioner's office is located in One Police Plaza—One PP, as it's more commonly known—or the Puzzle Palace, as it's sometimes referred to by the cops. It's a red-brick monolith that sits in lower Manhattan overlooking the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge. The super chiefs were all seated on one side of a long conference table facing the tall windows. The building had been outfitted with vertical blinds, which were open, the morning sun rising over the Brooklyn Bridge and blasting the room with yellow light.

John Miller, party animal that he was, usually prowled around Manhattan till all hours of the night. He hated to get up much before ten, so it was a measure of his devotion to his new job that he had dragged himself out of bed to attend. He and Maple sat with their backs to the windows as the chiefs squinted at them.

It is the custom and practice of the New York Police Department that, when coming to the police commissioner's office, all police personnel wear the dress blue uniform. It's a matter of respect for the office and the commissioner himself; when you're on the fourteenth floor, you dress the part. The chiefs of detectives and organized crime control, since they are not routinely in uniform, are permitted to wear suits. All these men in their crisp white shirts looked at Maple. “Who is this fat guy with the bow tie, this transit lieutenant who sits at the right hand of the commissioner, who now we're all a-scared of, who a week ago we wouldn't have given the time of day off our watches?” they must have wondered.

They looked at Miller. “And this hump over here. Some reporter!” And slowly it began to dawn on them: Oh my God, could the nightmare be true? Could
that
be the inner circle? Is it possible that the New York Police Department, the greatest law-enforcement institution in the world, is being run by some guy from Boston, a TV reporter, and a transit cop?

“Good morning, gang.” I walked in and sat down. “Some of you know me from the transit police; some of you don't know me.” I knew them. I had spent most of the past month going over everyone's files, which had been gathered by my transition team through both formal and informal sources. “Let me give you a few rules,” I said. “The way I operate is, I'm not into screaming and yelling and throwing things. I want input from everybody. I'd like to hear it.” There is the temptation to yes bosses to death, which doesn't do anybody any good. I wanted to put that out of the way first thing.

I went through an agenda of specific issues we would be dealing with early in my tenure.

“As far as your demeanor in the office,” I said, “I don't have a big fondness for cursing. I think we can communicate without doing that.”

With the formalities out of the way, I turned to the pressing business of the morning.

“Now, this mosque thing. Where are we on that?”

My new first deputy commissioner, Dave Scott, led the discussion. “We're looking for this Brother Jared,” I was told. One of the suspects now had a name. He had left the scene in all the hubbub before he could be detained, and the Muslims were in the process of reneging on their agreement to turn in those involved in the assault. “We have a description, and we're working on a sketch.”

After the meeting, some of my staff and I walked over to City Hall. I could have jumped into a car and had my security detail drive me, but it's not a long walk, and I enjoy getting around the city by foot. We went down the commissioner's private elevator, through the front lobby of One PP, out onto the brick concourse, past the United States attorney's office on the right. Walk around the back of the Municipal Building, past the hot-dog vendor who's always ready with a quick snack, and you're at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. We waited for the light to change.

The media had been after the mayor all morning, as would be expected. This kind of confrontation is big news. Reporters and news people were bundled in winter coats, toting notepads and battery packs, shouldering cameras and lights. As we came around the parking lot to the front of City Hall, they spotted us and converged, peppering us with questions as we walked.

“What does this mosque thing mean?”

“What's the response?”

“Black leaders are saying you are insensitive to their community!”

“Look,” I told them as I kept moving, “our police officers were responding to a call. They were doing their job, and they were attacked. We're conducting a full investigation.”

Without comparing notes, the mayor and I had said the same thing: There was a controversy, it got messy, and we are backing the cops up. In some ways, the mosque incident was a gift; for a department who had heard my roll-call speech at the 103 and wondered, “What's he really like?” here was the answer. I knew cops, I liked cops, I trusted cops. I would back up my force until I learned something different.

The next day I was officially sworn in at City Hall. Mayor Giuliani was very gracious in his private office prior to the ceremony as I introduced him to members of my family and friends. The room where I was sworn in was filled with over four hundred people. A baseball fan, Giuliani told the gathering, “Wade Boggs, we got him from Boston. And Babe Ruth.” I was flattered.

I'm usually much better when I ad lib, but that day I had some prepared remarks. “The people in the neighborhood,” I said, “the people on their beat, the tourists who make this city so great—they have to work together with police officers. They must share a common commitment to making individual blocks and whole neighborhoods safer. The public and police are partners.”

We police, I said, “are obliged to act against disorderly conditions and behavior that cause fear, no matter how trivial. We are obliged to deliver police services with the highest degree of professionalism possible. We are obliged to forge the strongest possible ties to the neighborhoods we protect. And we are obliged to stand by our police officers whenever they make honest, good-faith efforts to enforce the law.

“I am reminded of what John Paul Jones, the great American naval hero, said about being given an important command. He asked for ‘a ship that sails fast, for I intend to go in harm's way.’ You have given me a fast ship, Mr. Mayor, the most powerful in my profession, with the finest crew on earth, and we are prepared to go in harm's way. To do our duty to keep the peace, to make New York a safer place for all of us.

“That is my commitment to the men and women, the citizens of Boston …

“Excuse me.” I stopped.
“Boston!”
The whole room erupted in laughter, me most of all. “Just teasing you. I was getting a little too somber there.”

I quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where
he stands in times of challenge and controversy.’ That,” I said, “is how we should be measured.” I shook hands with the mayor, kissed Cheryl, and was presented with the shield of the police commissioner of the City of New York.

This gold ceremonial shield is absolutely beautiful. Eighteen-karat gold, it has five platinum stars and is filled with NYPD history and symbolism. It was presented to the first New York City police commissioner in 1901 and has been to every one since. I was the thirty-eighth.

My day was full of ceremonial activity and police routine. I tried to absorb the excitement, the pomp and circumstance, and also get down to work. In mid-afternoon, the woman who had custody of the shield was looking for it. It was normally kept in a vault and taken out only for special occasions, and she wanted it back. I couldn't find it. My first day in office, I had lost the $10,000 commissioner's shield that had been passed down for more than ninety years. “I'll get it down to you,” I told her. I didn't have a clue where it was.

At home that night, I asked my wife, “Cheryl, do you have any idea what I did with that badge? They're looking for it and can't find it.”

“Oh, I have it. You gave it to me at the ceremony.” Thus was New York City history preserved.

Two days later, Charles Hynes was getting sworn in as Brooklyn district attorney. I wanted to attend, but bad weather and heavy traffic had the Brooklyn Bridge all tied up. You could see from my office window that even with a siren blaring it would take an age for a police car to get across. I didn't want to miss the ceremony, so I told my security detail, “I'm going to take the train.”

They were aghast. They were brand new bodyguards for a brand new commissioner and they had the basic city cop's attitude about the subway: You don't go down there unless somebody's already dead. Plus, they didn't know how to get to Brooklyn. “It's only a couple of stops, guys,” I told them. “Let's go.”

We took the elevator downstairs and jumped on the number 4 train to Borough Hall.

My detail and I were standing in the car like any group of straphangers when a panhandler came through. It was, unfortunately, a common occurrence, a man walking through the cars with an aggressive spiel. While a series of lawsuits had established that begging for money is a constitutionally protected right, aggressive panhandling in an enclosed space like the subways has been judged to be illegal. The city had been overrun with
exactly this kind of behavior underground, and I had spent two years getting rid of it.

This guy's story was that he had tuberculosis; something communicable. He looked awful in a threatening and unhealthy way, and he was demanding money. No one wanted to be near him, no one would make eye contact. People ducked behind their newspapers or moved away. Anyone who has ever ridden the subway knows the sense of unpleasant resignation this scene brings: You're underground, there's no escape, and here he comes. The panhandler had taken over the car.

I moved toward him. “I'm the police commissioner,” I informed the man. “You're not allowed to do that. Get off the train.” I think I startled the guy. Civilians hardly ever stand up and take on the underground population. He objected, but he had no grounds; you can't intimidate people in the confined space of a subway train and expect to get away with it. This was exactly the quality-of-life violation I had been brought in to take care of. At the next station, I gave the guy the heave-ho. Now, we were taking back the city not only block by block but car by car.

My security detail closed in. God Almighty, not only is he riding the subway but now he's ejecting panhandlers! Who is this guy?

District Attorney Hynes was sworn into office in an ornate oak-paneled room in Borough Hall. Traffic had let up, and my detail convinced me to take the car back to the office, but before I headed over the bridge, I called in. Peter LaPorte, my chief of staff, told me, “The good news is that Minister Don Muhammad is here with his chief of security, Shariff Muhammad, and Minister Conrad Muhammad from the mosque.” Minister Don Muhammad—known as Minister Don—was head of the Boston chapter of the Nation of Islam and, I believe, Farrakhan's senior northeast representative. The Boston Black Muslim community had gotten along very well with the Boston police when I'd been there, Minister Don and I had a good working relationship, and when this situation broke, he had called me in New York and asked to set up a meeting. I'd said sure.

“Al Sharpton and C. Vernon Mason are with them,” LaPorte told me.

“What's Sharpton doing there?” I said. “I didn't agree to meet with him.”

I had never met Al Sharpton, but I was well aware of him. He was one of New York's most recognizable figures and injected himself into every New York racial issue, as he was now attempting to do in this one. He had counseled Tawana Brawley in a bogus case alleging abuse of a young black woman by six white men that, after months of salacious race-baiting by
him and his cohorts, turned out to be a hoax. His rabble-rousing around a black boycott of a Korean grocery store was shamefully destructive to the city's race relations and had seriously undermined the administration of Mayor Dinkins and his police commissioner, Lee Brown. While Sharpton has some following in certain segments of New York's population, his effect on the city has not been a positive one.

Sharpton is flamboyant and media savvy. He is a rotund man, his hair processed in the manner of James Brown. His attire of leisure suits, turtlenecks, and gold medallions, often worn simultaneously, had given way over the years to double-breasted suits and a more mainstream appearance. His whole persona was calculated for TV coverage.

He lived in New Jersey, but there was no denying his influence in New York. Because he was so visible, there were many people with legitimate leadership roles in the black community—businesspeople, religious people, elected officials—who were really not in the position to take him on except at great risk to themselves. Whatever risk I faced was more than made up for by the possibility of negating his influence as self-appointed community leader during my term. He had no role in this situation, and I wasn't about to let him get on his soapbox and use this issue to establish himself as a player with this administration.

“Have Dave Scott take Sharpton and Mason in his conference room and meet with them about whatever their concerns are.” This was entirely appropriate. “My meeting is scheduled with Minister Don. I'm not opening this to a mini–town meeting for whoever they've decided to bring along. I will meet with the principals involved, not self-appointed leaders.”

A few minutes later, LaPorte came back on the line. “They say you meet with all of them or you don't meet with them at all.”

“Well, Pete, then we don't meet with them. I will meet with the principals involved.”

Minister Don Muhammad could not be seen disrespecting such a loud and highly visible community figure by meeting with me alone, so the whole group left and held a press conference downstairs in the lobby of police headquarters. “We are extremely disappointed that this meeting did not take place,” announced Minister Don, “but it would not have been right and proper if we didn't have the entire group we have here.”

“Everyone in the community is upset,” said C. Vernon Mason. “Some of us believe the mayor has already made a deal to let the police be unrestrained.”

“Who is Bratton to say he will not meet with me?” wailed Sharpton. “[Ray] Kelly came to Brooklyn to eat grits with me.”