Bob McManus

Bob McManus

Opinion

Can Bratton deliver as Ray Kelly did?

Police Commissioner William Bratton’s gratuitous weekend slap at his predecessor, Ray Kelly, was silly on its face, but worrisome in its implications.

“Morale coming into this department was awful,” Bratton told a TV interviewer — handing the blame to Kelly, with whom he has never really gotten along.

Nor, frankly, has Kelly ever had much use for Bratton; alpha dogs don’t play well — so chalk up some of the new commissioner’s fussiness to old rivalries.

But, trivialities aside, there are fundamental differences between the two men; these are likely to become more obvious as the new proprietor configures One Police Plaza to his own priorities.

Kelly’s strong suit was focus and clarity of purpose; Bratton, to put it bluntly, is a bit of a flutterbug. He sometimes doesn’t play well with mayors, either, as Rudy Giuliani discovered after appointing him commissioner in ’94 — and as Mayor de Blasio may come to learn, as well.

Plus, Kelly placed real talent in key jobs. And while it’s too early to tell about Bratton in this respect, his appointment of a longtime sidekick, the on-again, off-again TV personality John Miller, as deputy commissioner for intelligence — one of the most sensitive anti-terrorism jobs in America — isn’t comforting.

Of course, focus and talent seem likely to become less critical as the NYPD re-orients itself from an agency dedicated to the safety of a great city to one meant principally to placate activists, agitators and civil-liberties zealots.

De Blasio’s core constituency, in other words.

And this past weekend marked a critical point in that transition, as Bratton and his patron finally took unambiguous title to the NYPD.

For sure, they’ve been running the department since Inauguration Day. But it takes time to put your people in charge all across a complex organization — and now that process is complete.

Bratton’s unnecessary gibe was a mere final flourish — again, the new big dog marking his territory.

More substantive was de Blasio’s appointment last Friday of a professional cop-watcher as the NYPD’s first inspector general. Philip Eure, up to now overseeing the Washington, DC, police, appears reasonable enough, though even he seems a little unconvinced about the need for his new position.

“Leading the first inspector-general office of the NYPD is an incredible opportunity to work with the premier police department [that] is globally recognized in one of the greatest cities in the world,” said Eure on Friday.

Um, if so, what’s a watchdog to watch, anyway?

Then again, work does indeed expand to fill the time (and resources) available for its completion; doubtless Eure will fill his calendar without too much effort.

Even as he labors in a ludicrously crowded field.

He’ll be competing for oxygen with federal monitor Peter Zimroth, appointed by a civil-liberties-obsessed judge who willfully misconstrued rational, if aggressive, street policing as racial profiling — and who tailored Zimroth’s mandate accordingly.

And there will be the newly radicalized City Council, with its own anti-police agenda, plus the usual City Hall-steps chorus of advantage-seekers and opportunity-takers.

That’s a lot of cooks for a relatively simple soup: Shouldn’t policing principally be about ensuring public safety and deterring terrorism?

New York’s record in this respect — and it can’t be said often enough — is the urban gold standard. Bratton — any new commissioner — would be hard-pressed to improve upon it, but that’s no reason not to try.

Will he? Here are two tests — simple and easy to understand.

■ The NYPD is under intense pressure to dismantle Giuliani-era school-security practices. These include doorway metal detectors, scanners and pat-downs — anathema to the activists but integral to safe high-school classrooms.

Which way will the administration go? The answer will say a lot about what’s to come.

■ Equally strong is açtivist opposition to the department’s expansive — and remarkably successful — anti-terrorism programs. Candidate de Blasio last year all but promised to dismantle them — and Bratton’s replacement of the supremely qualified David Cohen by the essentially uncredentialed TV luminary John Miller probably represents the first big step in that direction.

Again, whither the future? New Yorkers might want to avoid Times Square until that’s been clarified. For one never can tell.

More to the immediate point, Ray Kelly ran a superb police department. Whether Bill Bratton can sustain the excellence, given who he works for, is an open question.

But history will judge him harshly if he doesn’t.