‘REFUND’ NOT ‘DEFUND’ COPS
Former top cop Bill Bratton says police will be needed as summer crime heats up
Bill Bratton, once the city’s top cop, said it’s time to “refund the police” — not defund them — before summer violence spirals out of control.
“We need to listen to what the people want the police to do with them. That’s community policing and it works,” said Bratton, who has just come out with a new book titled “The Profession.”
“Let’s take a breath and look at what we could do better,” he told the Herald in a lengthy interview Friday. “Instead of defund the police we should refund them with money for training, more cops and support from the government.”
He said the hashtag calling for police defunding will only hurt the innocent in the long run. He stressed the first order of business is to “prevent crime and disorder.”
Bratton, who ran the police departments in Boston, New York (twice) and Los Angeles, was born in Dorchester and joined the force here where he said he learned how good cops get the job done.
That’s when ComStat — the use of computer-generated crime analytics — was melded with community policing based on the “broken windows” theory where if you left busted glass go unrepaired, crime was sure to follow.
“The criminal justice movement is the flavor of the month, but critics are attacking everything that was working,” he said, adding that while what the world learned from the slaying of George Floyd in Minneapolis was evil captured on video, most police officers want to do an honest day’s work.
He said mayors and police commissioners must “work together” — as a doctor does with a patient — start all over, if that’s needed, or a “blended” approach to a problem.
“Defunding the police is the stupidest idea ever,” Bratton said. “We’re losing cops. You’re demoralizing police and what you get is basically more crime.”
He said there are “bad cops” and “racist cops” — “but don’t paint a whole profession as bad.”
He also didn’t hold back on other issues:
IN BOSTON: The “fractured leadership” mess after Acting Mayor Kim Janey fired embattled police Commissioner Dennis White calls for “an outsider” to be recruited to the city. That hire, Bratton said, should be made once the next mayor is elected this fall. “Boston needs a national search and hiring the right outsider after the fractured leadership.”
DA ROLLINS: Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins, he said, is a progressive backed by mega-donor George Soros. He said Rollins is “well-intended,” but has “lost sight of the fact very bad, very vicious people deserve to be in jail.” He also said speculation that Rollins is in line for the U.S. attorney’s post in Massachusetts could limit her power to get things done. Rollins could not be reached for comment.
DC LACK OF SUPPORT: Bratton said he’s “not seeing much” coming out of the Biden administration as crime heats up to frightening levels of violence in many hotspots — including New York City. “The federal government will need to make decisions with the crime rate,” he added. “It will be interesting to see, with the explosion of serious crime, what will they do about it.”