DISMANTLING THE MYTH OF BILL BRATTON’S LAPD
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2013 AT 5:51PM
Bill Bratton is named to lead the New York Police Department, by New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio on December 5, 2013 in New York City. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images, 2013)This article was originally published by The Nation, on December 6, 2013.
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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, 2002-2009, 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.
First, a comparison. Bratton personally commissioned a 2009 Harvard study of the LAPD which showed an escalation of stops— both pedestrian and motorists—from 587,200 in 2002 to 875,204 in 2008, equally or surpassing the stop-and-frisk numbers in New York, where the policy was ruled unconstitutional and was a central issue in de Blasio's campaign. Well over 70 percen