For William Bratton, former police commissioner of New York City, it all comes down to management.
Bratton began his career as a police officer in Boston in 1970, rising by 1980 to superintendent of police, the highest sworn rank in the Boston Police Department. Since 1983, he has managed five police agencies, accomplishing major reforms in each department while overseeing significant declines in crime. He served as chief of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Police and as superintendent of the Metropolitan District Commission Police, which patrolled the Boston metropolitan area. From 1990 to 1992, he won national recognition for his leadership of the New York City Transit Police, initiating reforms and strategies that eventually cut subway crime by nearly 50 percent.
Bratton holds a bachelor's degree from Boston State College and is a graduate of the FBI National Executive Institute. In 1996, he was appointed a visiting fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government where he also attended as a senior executive fellow in 1987. He has received numerous honors and awards throughout his career including honorary doctoral degrees from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the New York Institute of Technology and Curry College. He holds the Schroeder Brothers Medal, the Boston Police Department's highest award for valor, which he earned by facing down a bank robber and rescuing a hostage in 1975.
Bratton has served on many national committees and task forces, including the National Crime Commission to which he was appointed by President Clinton in 1996. He served as president of the Police Executive Research Forum, a national research and police-policy think tank from 1992 to1996.
The tools that helped it happen were computer mapping and statistics. The high-tech system and surrounding management strategies that Bratton and his team put in place is COMPSTAT, and it is being considered or implemented by law enforcement agencies throughout the world.
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Q: Why is COMPSTAT so effective?
A: COMPSTAT is a multifaceted management tool -- the Swiss Army knife of police management. Technology is the accessory that makes it work. It really just comes down to an effective way of managing police.
The key to COMPSTAT was bringing a lot of people together -- people with expertise, people that knew their precincts and their beats -- and brainstorming. There is not much point in brainstorming if you only have one person in the room. The key was having all those brains in the room together on a regular basis.
Technology is the facilitator. It made our success possible. It gave us the data we needed to structure a strategy, and the COMPSTAT meetings made it possible to hold managers accountable for crime in their neighborhoods.
It's really about sharing ideas, empowerment and accountability. And it works. In New York we accomplished amazing things. The statistical drop in crime was unprecedented. One of my favorites was an 80-percent drop in subway crime. People used to be terrified of riding the subways, now there are some days with no subway crime at all.
Q: Accountability always comes up when COMPSTAT is mentioned. What does it mean in a practical sense?
A: One of the significant drivers behind my career was working under a lot of incompetent bastards. I worked hard to get past the incompetents. Making COMPSTAT work meant doing our best to bring everybody to the table, giving them a chance to perform and, if they didn't, moving them out. Within my first year, half the precinct commanders were replaced. Where COMPSTAT isn't having as dramatic a result, you see the opposite.
John Timoney (Philadelphia's top cop and formerly on Bratton's NYPD team) has been given little power to move deadwood in Philly and there is a lot of it there. Similar problems exist in Los Angeles. They are still doing a lot of good things in both those cities, but it slows the process down. You've got to move the deadwood and put in good managers to make any COMPSTAT-style process work.
Cities Map Out Plans
New York City's Police Department blazed the IT trail with its 1993 implementation of COMPSTAT under the direction of Police Commissioner William Bratton. Other cities have paid attention. In 1998 Minneapolis rolled out CODEFOR (see "Policing Where the Crime Is," Government Technology, April), a combination of GIS technology and police work, much like COMPSTAT, that seeks to use police-department resources effectively, where they are needed, based on accurate information.
Philadelphia began using COMPSTAT in 1998. Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney, who served as first deputy police commissioner to Bratton, is the man responsible for bringing COMPSTAT to Philadelphia. Timoney said he wanted to use the "entirely new and much more effective set of policies and procedures for tackling urban crime and disorder" that came from COMPSTAT in Philadelphia. Timoney has established a Quality Assurance Bureau, which regularly audits crime statistics. Timoney has also met with representatives of the police departments of Bucks, Montgomery, Chester and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania -- the four counties surrounding Philadelphia -- to discuss implementing a regional approach to crime fighting
New Orleans converted after consulting with Jack Maple, former second-in-command at the NYPD. The New Orleans Police Department, through its COMPSTAT program, is now utilizing the Web to post maps of crime statistics throughout all its districts. Overall, New Orleans had the largest reduction in violent crime in the nation between 1996 and 1998 -- a drop of 37.5 percent.
Q: Is this why some police managers view COMPSTAT as divisive?
A: It shouldn't be divisive. Everyone is working toward the same goal. You have to draw the precinct commanders and department managers into the process. You don't just let them choose to sit on the sidelines.
The reality is that COMPSTAT does produce some tension. If you go to school without doing your homework, you are scared to death the teacher is going to call on you. In COMPSTAT you are guaranteed to get called on. So if you don't prepare, if you don't participate in the team, you are going to be embarrassed right out of the room.
There is no place to hide with COMPSTAT because everyone is on- stage. It's not your mannerisms or your personality, it's your knowledge and your commitment.
Q: What are the steps of the COMPSTAT process?
A: COMPSTAT means timely, accurate intelligence, rapid response, effective tactics and relentless follow-up. These principles should be a part of every police department in America today.
When we came in crime stats were 3 months old. What the hell good is that? Those kind of stats are good for reporting, but not for action. So you need timely intelligence, then you need to respond rapidly using the right approach, and don't let up. If you push the drug dealers off the street and into buildings, then you go into the buildings.
South Africa Crime
How bad is crime in South Africa? Consider the following:
Two percent, or one out of 50, of South Africa's population is behind bars.
More than 34,000 South African prisoners have escaped in the last four years while awaiting trial.
The murder rate in South Africa rose to 58.5 murders per 100,000 in 1998 -- over eight times the murder rate in the United States.
Only Honduras, Namibia and Swaziland reported higher ratios of reported cases of murder in 1997
Q: How does this differ from policing in the 1970s and 1980s?
A: American policing in the '70s involved rapid response, random patrols and reactive investigation. It was because out of the 1960s' culture came a belief that crime was caused by societal factors like poverty. This societal approach to reducing crime failed miserably, so bad that it went up by unprecedented, practically unimaginable amounts. We know now that crime is caused by individual factors and we are putting police back into the proper role of preventing crime, not just responding to it.
We can control individual behavior by putting checks on the bad behavior in society.
Q: Where did the idea for COMPSTAT come from?
A: It was developed over years. I had used maps and pin maps since my early days in Boston. Back then, we used various colors of pins to show different types of crimes and you went to the file boxes if you wanted more information. With new technologies, that process is streamlined to a degree no one dreamed of 20 years ago.
Inasmuch as no one else can claim authorship, I guess you could say it was our team at NYPD. That team included Jack Maple, John Timoney and Louis Anemone. I was fortunate enough to the ringmaster of the circus we were running at NYPD.
Q: You mention Jack Maple and he garners a lot of press. How did he come to your attention and make such a dramatic climb in the ranks at NYPD?
A: Jack is one of the great crime-mapping minds in America. The transit beat, the subways, where I met Maple, was really the testing ground for what we did up on the streets later.
One of my skills as a manager has always been an ability to spot talent and not be bound by traditional roles and ways of moving up the ladder. So, while a lot of people were offended by Jack's progress, it was really just the way I always did things. You put the best at the top.
He has a brilliant mind and a photographic memory, and he shared my belief that we, as cops, could do something about crime. I didn't think we had to spend our entire careers chasing 911 calls, we could change things. For years, police managers grew up trained as maintenance people: "Here is a problem, go fix it." Now we are relearning how to actually fight crime. The key is optimism and the idea that you can do something about crime. Jack believed that too.
It, once again, was just a successful management practice of empowering creative people with good ideas and holding them accountable for doing their jobs.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney
The following is an edited version of testimony Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney made March 3 before the House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform and Oversight.
My introduction to policing took place on the streets of the South Bronx and Harlem, where I served first as a patrol officer and then as a narcotics investigator. I spent 12 challenging and rewarding years fighting crime before I began the long climb up the management ladder.
It was under Commissioner Bratton that I had the fortune of being a member of the team that changed fundamentally the way the NYPD approached its core mission. We developed a new and much more effective set of policies and procedures for tackling urban crime and disorder. The heart of the new approach to fighting crime in New York is COMPSTAT.
There are three main features of the COMPSTAT approach.
The first is the decentralization of decision-making to the local commander, who is in closest touch with the crime and quality of life conditions in neighborhoods. He or she, is therefore, best-placed to develop and implement the strategies necessary to tackle these conditions. This is the approach we adopted in Philadelphia. The role of top management is to support, advise and supply the local commander and to set the policy framework. It is also our role to monitor the performance of the local commander and to hold him/her accountable for that performance.
To formalize this monitoring and accountability process, we introduced the second important feature of COMPSTAT -- namely, weekly meetings at which local commanders report on their performance to the department's top management.
The third and most important feature is the use of computerized maps of crime information to set strategic and tactical targets for local commanders and measure their performance against these targets. The maps enable the department to focus its resources where they are most needed. For this reason, the information used to produce these maps, the department's criminal statistics, must be both accurate and timely. This is crucial!
But to fight crime effectively, police commanders have to identify crime patterns. Unfortunately, these patterns often cross boundaries because criminals have no respect for jurisdictional boundaries. It becomes difficult when the criminals decide to ignore the Philadelphia city limits and to extend their activities to other townships, counties or even states.
Each of the nearly 100 police departments in our region collects information but [each] has its own computer systems to maintain and analyze it. These systems cannot talk to each other.
If all these departments were to share common data and technical standards, the exchange of crime information could be performed automatically -- electronically. How much more effective we would all be!
The federal government has an important role to play here. Enabling police departments to exchange crime information electronically is too important a goal to be left to voluntary action at local level.
Q: Speaking of management, you are unusual in law enforcement in that you don't seem to miss the streets. You pride yourself on being a good manager. How has that affected your career?
A: When I was a cop in Boston, making sergeant and then detective seemed to be the route I was heading, but it wasn't what I was committed to.
Eventually I realized that my real talents were in the area of management and that is where I headed. I love being a manager.
Even when I went into private practice I felt that way. I tried working as a consultant and hated it. I am a manager. My reputation was made as a police manager. Consulting is not managing, so I did not like it.
I no longer consider myself a consultant. I think of us as an information services firm. I travel to speak and give lectures. There is a lot of money in being a consultant but it just wasn't for me. Jack makes a lot of money consulting but he is probably the unhappiest person in America because of all the travel he has to do.
Q: Speaking of consulting, the government of South Africa asked you to come down and talk about COMPSTAT. How did that trip work out?
A: They have no idea what they are doing down there. Crime is out of control in ways that New Yorkers never envisioned in their nightmares. I went down there, but they opted not to bring us in and crime continues to skyrocket, and that means violent crimes. They have to do something and soon. The hope of Africa is South Africa, and South Africa is blowing it.
Q: Speaking of needing to do something soon, the NYPD has come under increasing fire for being to aggressive in their policing. What's gone wrong in New York in the last year, and what needs to be done?
A: Admittedly, while crime continues to be dropping off, some other problems have developed in New York. Those problems should teach us that now that we are managing crime, we have to be even more vigilant than before at managing police. The irony of the New York situation is that at a time when the police department should be celebrated, they are being reviled.
The fact is that you have to manage cops well or they will get out of control. After COMPSTAT, it is in many ways even more critical.
Q: Why would it be more critical?
A: We attacked crime relentlessly. We went after warrant arrests, prosecuted quality-of-life crimes. We were aggressive about it. At one point some of our people used the term "in- your-face" policing and we jumped on it right away. It denotes the wrong image to the public and gives the wrong impression for the police on the street. We stopped that.
Still, as crime went down, there were less and less constitutional reasons to do a stop and frisk, less justifiable reason to use aggressive tactics.
But, especially after I left, the cops in New York kept the pressure on and continued using tactics as if it was 1994. We had attacked crime aggressively and got the stats way down, but afterward they couldn't seem to let up.
An example is one situation that came up while I was still there. We were very assertive going after people on warrants. In those instances where the suspect might be armed, we would call in a special tactics unit. Over time, though, it became common to always use the tactical unit no matter what or who the warrant was for. They used stun grenades each time and looked at it as practice. Can you imagine the reaction we would have gotten if one of these incidents had went bad? But with COMPSTAT, because we were having the weekly, city wide meetings, we saw it happening and put a stop to it.
But some of those that came behind us, when I left the department, did not understand that the reality had changed. Not every black man was a suspect.
Q:For other communities trying to duplicate what you accomplished, do they need someone like you or a consultant like Jack Maple to help?
A: No. It's really just about good management practices. People like us can help to facilitate it though. Sometimes a city's management is ready to do it, but just doesn't quite understand the concepts. We are good at it because we have been there before.
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Notable Quotables
"Maps don't know the difference between a poor person and a rich person. The dots are the same size regardless."
-- Jack Maple, Government Technology, April.
"The COMPSTAT system provides preliminary crime figures on a timely basis to all levels of police management. The system has facilitated the Police Department's ability to respond to local trends, and has allowed us to implement preventative anti-crime strategies in a flexible and effective manner."
-- New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
Government Technology, July.
"Let's say crime is going down, on its own, by 2 or 3 percent; COMPSTAT will make it go down by 15 percent. Let's say crime is going up by 20 percent all over; COMPSTAT will keep it to 2 or 3 percent. The more 'intel' you have, the better deployed you are, and if you hold people accountable, crime will go down."
-- Maple.
"The beauty of mapping is that it poses the question, 'Why?' What are the underlying causes of why there is a certain cluster of crime in a particular place?"
-- Maple.
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Justice and Technology Editor Raymond Dussault is also a research director for the Law Enforcement Technology Acquisition Project. E-mail
