Metro

Giuliani approves of de Blasio’s potential police commissioners

Rudy approves.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani agrees with mayor-elect Bill de Blasio about at least one thing: his taste in potential police commissioners.

Even though Giuliani stumped hard against de Blasio in his support for GOP mayoral candidate Joe Lhota, the former mayor gave high marks Thursday to two of de Blasio’s top candidates to head the NYPD — Bill Bratton and Phillip Banks III.

“You have a choice between someone that’s somewhat newer and has a whole group of new ideas like chief Banks — who’s an excellent choice — or someone like Bill Bratton who’s been through New York, Los Angeles, Boston,” Giuliani said at a breakfast in midtown hosted by the National Law Enforcement and Firefighters Children’s Foundation.

Bratton served as NYPD Commissioner under Rudy from 1994 to 1996, while Banks was promoted to Chief of Department earlier this year.

“It depends if you want to try someone new, someone with a lot of different ideas and theories — and there’s probably two or three other choices,” said the former Republican mayor. “Either one of them would make excellent police commissioners.”

Current NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly attended the breakfast as well, but declined to speculate on his successor.

De Blasio has said he expects to name some of his top picks for the new administration by late next week.

He has said First Deputy NYPD Commissioner Rafael Pineiro was also interviewed for the top cop job.