Police Commissioner Bill Bratton may be right when he says the legacy of the stop-and-frisk era is going to be the NYPD’s new inspector general, a federal monitor and an enlarged Civilian Complain Review Board.
But it’s disappointing to see the commissioner take a cheap shot by suggesting it’s the fault of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg and ex-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Not to mention complaining that police morale was “awful” when he took over.
Yes, Bratton acknowledges Bloomberg and Kelly “did a great job in the sense of keeping the community safe, keeping crime down.” But this only makes his attack on them more unseemly.
To begin with, the federal monitor is the result of one person: federal Judge Shira Scheindlin, who turned her courtroom into a kangaroo court for cops. So outrageous was her behavior an appeals court took the case away from her.
Judge Scheindlin’s inquisition was cheered on by activists and politicians calling our cops racist. Which raises this question: If Bratton did find morale low, was that because of those like Kelly and Bloomberg, who hailed their achievements and defended their good work in the courts — or because of those who maligned our cops even as they were bringing the murder rate down to record lows?
Today, unfortunately, the most vocal critics of the police during the years of the greatest police successes are no longer on the political sidelines. Now they are in power, starting with the mayor.
We don’t expect the police commissioner to attack the mayor who appointed him. But nor do we expect him to be impugning predecessors who made Gotham into the safest big city in America. All this does is hand ammunition to those guilty of a terrible libel of our men and women in blue.
It’s easy for Bratton to go on television to talk about the shortcomings of his predecessors now that they are out of office. For the city’s sake, we just hope he can match their record of success.