Houston needs a police chief like Bill Bratton
And HPD needs to adopt 'Broken Windows' policing
By Howie Katz
Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, pictured in January 2022, lashed out at woke newly-elected Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, claiming the city's top prosecutor is 'handcuffing the police' (Credit: Daily Mail)
To my good friend Jay Wall
Your May 19 missive to Mayor Whitmire on blogHOUSTON was spot on ... well, not exactly.
I agree with every thing you wrote except for your advocacy of COMPSTAT, to which you referred seven times. You've been stuck on COMPSTAT ever since its inception in 1994. The concept of accountability is a god one but it is subject to abuse. NYPD captains manipulated the statistics to keep from looking bad. Besides, there are more recent accountability programs that are superior to COMPSTAT.
You are absolutely correct when you say that the most important staffing decision Mayor Whitmire will make is the appointment of the next police chief.
Houston needs a police chief like Bill Bratton who has served as head of the Boston Police Department, the New York Police Department (twice) and the Los Angeles Police Department. There was a notable reduction of crime while he served as chief in those cities.
Bratton is a strong advocate of 'Broken Windows' policing, which holds that persons arrested for minor crimes such as vandalism, loitering, public drinking, public urination, littering and other quality of life offenses, are less likely to commit serious crimes later on. The belief is that people who will not get away with minor offenses will be discouraged from committing serious crimes
Broken Windows has been condemned by civil libertarians and academics for disproportionately impacting minority neighborhoods. True, but that is not because of institutional racism as former President Obama ha s alleged, but because the residents of poor neighborhoods are more likely to commit quality of life offenses than the resident of predominantly white middle class communities.
In cities where broken windows is practiced, the number of serious crimes has been reduced. And the jail population has been reduced as well. That's why Houston needs Broken Windows policing.
My advise to Mayor Whitmire is for him to coax Bill Bratton out of retirement and appoint him as Houston's police chief. But barring that, he should appoint Bratton to head up the search committee for the next chief.
Above all though, do not select another clown. Does Art Acevedo ring a bell?
1 comment:
Houston PD has always been an above average police department. I worked with Houston's Finest. Most were good cops who did their jobs as they were supposed to be done. The majority of the cops I worked with worked extra jobs. They also protected those extra jobs to the point of sometimes looking the other way and alerting club owners about Vice/TABC inspections and raids. The cops did this because they preferred a lifestyle that depended on extra jobs. The latest scandal involves shelving thousands of cases in plain site that were in need of investigation. Compstat was always a joke because of upper administrations manipulation of the stats. The civil rights era did provide MLK Blvd and thus allowed interstate highway travelers knowledge of where not to exit.
Overall Obama did more harm to Law Enforcement than any other person or program ever conceived. Obama is still harming LE through his surrogate, Biden. (USA)
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