Why Do Increases in Police Brutality Follow NYPD Commissioner Bratton Wherever He Goes?
/Can the disturbing cases of police brutality and excessive force that have plagued cities like New York and Los Angeles in recent years be traced back to William Bratton?
In an intriguing article in Slate by writer Justin Peters, he makes a strong case that the answer is a resounding “Yes.”
Peters writes that the broken windows philosophy of policing enthusiastically advocated by Bratton—that if officers crack down on petty quality-of-life offenses it will prevent the major crimes from occurring—is responsible for the increases in complaints of excessive force against police in New York and Los Angeles over the past two decades. Bratton was the commissioner in New York, then Los Angeles, and now back in New York to oversee the rise in complaints in both places.
Before Eric Garner died from a police-administered chokehold earlier this year, there was William Cardenas in 2006 in Los Angeles who said he couldn’t breathe during an officer chokehold, and Anthony Baez who was killed in the Bronx in 1994 with an officer chokehold. As Peters points out, Bratton—whom he calls “the most celebrated police official of his era”—was in charge during each of these cases and, after each one, spewed encouraging rhetoric about police “retraining.”
“We’ve heard that before. From New York to Los Angeles to New York again, William Bratton’s career has been pockmarked by ‘I can’t breathe’–grade incidents, by increased civilian complaints of excessive force,” Peters writes. “And every time, more or less, Bratton has responded by calling for training reforms and resisting outside intervention into police disciplinary methods. Police brutality and excessive force are problems in all police departments, not just Bratton’s. But Bratton’s reputation as a reformer, as well as his history of evading responsibility for excesses committed by officers under his command, merit more scrutiny than they’ve received.”
