Bratton wants to fire the officers that, by their actions, are undoing all the good NYPD is trying to achieve
Perceptions are not always what they seem. I foresee a shitload of lawsuits that will be filed against NYPD and NYC once they start firing officers that appear to be brutal, racist, corrupt or incompetent.
BRATTON TELLS POLICE BRASS: OUST BAD COPS
Commissioner Cites ‘the Brutal, the Corrupt, the Racist, the Incompetent’
By Pervaiz Shallwani
The Wall Street Journal
October 2, 2014
Police Commissioner William Bratton said Thursday that the New York Police Department must confront the reality that it had officers who were “poisoning the well” and needed to be weeded out.
In a speech to NYPD executives, Mr. Bratton described the number of problematic officers as “very few,” but said their actions hampered the work of the rest of their colleagues.
“My intention going forward is to ensure that we will aggressively seek to get those out of the department who should not be there—the brutal, the corrupt, the racist, the incompetent,” he said.
Mr. Bratton didn’t specify how such officers would be identified and removed. He said the work would be carried out by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau along with independent partners including local prosecutors, the city’s newly installed inspector general for the police and a revamped Civilian Complaint Review Board.
Patrick Lynch, president of Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the union that represents NYPD officers, said his organization would “ensure that every officer who is accused has the same opportunity to defend him or herself as any other American.”
The drive to oust some officers was among several goals laid out by Mr. Bratton in remarks to more than 800 top police executives at a one-day retreat in College Point, Queens. The rest of the forum was private.
In his speech, Mr. Bratton cited the sharp drop in crime over the past 20 years in some high-crime neighborhoods but said the NYPD also needed to find ways to make those communities as safe as those where violent crime is a rarity. “We clearly need to do something about the disparity of safety in this city,” he said.
Even as the 35,000-officer department works to be innovative, savvy about technology and improve community outreach, “there’s the need to also deal with our discipline systems,” Mr. Bratton said.
“The reality is, at this moment, that there’s some in the organization who shouldn’t be here,” he said. “They’re not the right fit for the NYPD of 2014. There are a few, a very few, in a very large organization who just don’t get it.”
“They are poisoning the well, and the trust that we deserve and the trust that we need is eroded by some of their actions,” Mr. Bratton said.
For the 99% he said he believed were doing the job the right way, Mr. Bratton said he planned to provide better training, equipment and leadership.
The commissioner said he came to the conclusion while dealing with the flurry of cellphone videos that show alleged excessive use of force by officers along with other activities of officers. The videos include one in which an officer on Staten Island uses an apparent chokehold while trying to arrest Eric Garner for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes.
Mr. Garner later died, and the city chief medical examiner’s office ruled he died in part as a result of the chokehold. Mr. Bratton has called what he has seen on the video an apparent violation of department protocol. The Staten Island district attorney has empaneled a grand jury to determine if charges should be filed against the officer.
In another instance, an officer in Brooklyn was captured on video allegedly kicking a street vendor as other officers worked to arrest him. Mr. Bratton said he had suspended that officer while the department conducted an internal investigation.
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