And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose bill bratton is here. He is the Police Commissioner for new york city. This is the second time hes held the post, having previously served under mayor rudy guiliani, commissioner for boston and la Police Departments. Crime wait in new york city continued to fall in 2014. The number of homesideicides fell t but there are challenges despite success. Thousands have taken to the streets in the past few months to protest against the nypds approach to some policing. Protests triggered in response to a Staten Island grand jurys decision not to indict the officer who killed eric garner after placing him in what appeared to be a choke hold. There has been a widening reef police the chief Police Unions and the mayor who has expressed solidarity. Tensions peeked after the killing of two Police Officers last month. Police officers turned their back at mayors and Police Stopped enforcing it minor crimes and some of the numbers released on monday showed enforcement activity is rising but still falls short of last years levels. David ignatius recently wrote the spirit of Police Community partnership has been badly damaged in new york and across the country, but the best model for how to heel the rachel is brattons own experience fixing broken Police Departments in new york and los angeles. The police chief who can be said to have reinvented policing will have to do it once more. From david ignatius. I am pleased to have bill bratton back on this program. Welcome. Good to have you here its first time to talk to you about a job you know very well, not only having seen it from new york but boston and la. Does it differ from different cities . The role of the man or woman who is in charge of the police . Sure. Thats what makes it so exciting for me. Its not deja fewvu all over again. With 20 years between the first time and the second time as Police Commissioner, its all different in many respects. And so thats why i enjoy it so much. Thats why i like the challenges that it presents. Rose in other words, when you heard the mayor might very well be thinking about you, this was a job that you welcomed a return to . Thats true. I never expected that i would get an opportunity to return to it, but much the same as i after when i left policing in 1996, publiand went into the private sector, had not expected to return to the Public Sector, but then the opening occurred in los angeles in 2002, and i heard the clarion call, and off i went. Rose you were there for seven years . Seven years, 2002 to 2009. Its hard to believe. Where the hell did that time go . Rose what is it about police work that cant investigates you captivate did you . I think its so impactful. You can impact on everybody. More so than almost any other profession. If you get it right the impact is so profound in a positive way. So new york city 1994, 7 and a half Million People living in the city. By making the city that much safer, all 7 and a half million of them benefited, the 50 million tourists who come benefited. Los angeles 2002, a city that had been torn biracial violence for most by rachel violence, the opportunity to heal that violence by using the police as the the healing tool rather than the flashpoint of all of the anger that had brought two of the worst race rights in american history. How can you not suck k succumb to that type of challenge . Rose you have been in the forefront of modern technology. Some of it you designed here and the Previous Term yet, at the same time, it seems to me essential in every community for the police to have a relationship with the areas in which they serve. Those things not in contra diction but is it still true . It is still true and i froeblth frequently talk about talk about sir robert peele the creator of the metropolitan police in the 1800s and went on to become the british prime minister. He had nine principles of policing when you read them today they are even more relevant today than 150 years ago. The first being that the basic mission for which the police exists is to prevent i emphasize prevent crime and disorder. The other eight principles go on to talk about how it should be done. And so when you talk about Technology Technology is an enhancement of those nine principles that, for example, the body camera issue, which is so much in the Public Discourse today, body cameras have the ability to really help bridge some of the gap between police and particularly the minority communities where there is still so much tension throughout america, part of the rachel divide that still divides us and police tend to be right in the middle of all of that. Quite clearly in the last year at any rate. But that technology is going to be able to really remove some of the tension between he said she said because its going to be able to validate one side versus the other. So technology if properly used can be a great boon to policing. One of the exciting things about coming back to policing in 2014 is the world of technology i get to work with. No Police Department has as much as nypd. In 2015, its going to be the year of technology in the nypd. We are going to change the face of policing in new york city and effectively change the face of policing in america this year in new york. Whats the relationship between the police and the police union . In terms of when you say the police and the police union, Police Officers or Police Management . Rose all across the board. I will speak to my relationship. I have always had very good relationships, sometimes excellent relationships, with my Police Unions in the six Police Organizations i have led. I have never had a vote of no confidence, which in my profession, oftentimes, is a badge of honor because somebody in a bad post can post no confidence. I have been able to walk a middle road where we have been able to agree or disagree. Its never gotten personal. I work hard at that. Even now in new york city between the Police Unions and the mayor, one positive at this juncture is the relationships that i had formed with the unions over the past year help to go weather the storm as the mayor and the unions try to find Common Ground that they can stand on so that the disagreements over the last number of months that have boiled to the surface and actually boiled over, that hopefully, i can, because of the relationships i have with them and the relationships i have with the mayor, that i might be able to serve as a bridge in trying to deal with the rift, the unfortunate rift, thats developed between them. Rose whats at the heart of that rift . It is a number of things, charlie. There is no one thing. Its a succession of issues. The New York Times recently had an analysis on it and it listed a number of things that were going on the administration, the appointments on the part of the mayor that the unions took umberance the may ors wife chief of staff was a woman that the unions right from the beginning did not like because of the relationship she had of a boyfriend that she was living with. Rose who had a felon conviction . A felony conviction. It began to poison the well. Something i ended up involved with, the mayor with a well intentioned thing after the socalled choke hold death on Staten Island tried to in a bridging exercise at city hall, brought ministers and Community Leaders from Staten Island in but brought the reverend al sharpton into that meeting. The placement of the seating the photograph, the very famous photograph, one side of the mayor, mr. Sharpton is on the other. Reportsrose what did that say to people . Particularly to the cops that they went crazy as well as particularly the tab tabloids the post and the daily news, particularly the post hates sharpton. The idea of putting him ol seemingly equal footing with the Police Commissioner, it gave them a cause celeb. With the unions that had begun to have their difficulties with the mayor it gave them just another nail to drive into the coffin. And even for myself. It caused me know end no end of problems in the sense of friends, professional acquaintances. Whats going on . As much as mr. Sharpton has become a spokesperson and probably the most well known spokesperson for the Africanamerican Community the africanamerican civil rights community, on the one hand. On the other and he is anathama to the police and to the tabloid community. Because of an early history of his . And the twana barley incidents. The current controversies around financial issues. There is no shortage of reasons why you either like or you dislike him. But that incident was really played up so significantly and continues to be referenced in almost any analysis of what led to the breakdown of relationships. Rose whats your role . I see my role in the midst of all of the storm and contro versy is to keep moving the Police Department forward so its delivering effective services, trying wherever i can to work with the mayor, to bridge the differences and difficulties with the unions but also to bridge the differences and difficulties with the communities that, quite clearly, voted him in to office significantly around the issue of frayed relationships with the Police Department. Frayed relationships aroundaround rose in other words, the minority communities that particularly, they, in fact, supported candidate deblaz diblasio because they believed he would represent their point of view about Law Enforcement . Principlebly the question of stop, question and frisk. Rose okay. Which under the previous administration, ray kelley commissioner, mayor mike bloomberg, that in the election in which mr. Di blasio came from literally last place to first place and was elected, significantly, it was around the issue of stop question and frisk which really came to the forefront in that election. His position and one i supported, that the practice of stop, question, and frisk had expanded too much in the previous number of years in that, like going to a doctor and et cetera treating your cancer with chemotherapy, if he gives you too much he is tryinghe is going to kill you as he is trying to cure you. As crime was going down dramatically, stop question and frisk numbers why were going onup dramatically. It was the belief one was causing the other that it was to reduce crime. I think mayor bloomberg who is passionate on being an antigun crusader was vince. 1 of the ways was to use the stop, question and frisk. Unfortunately, thats about 10 of the reasons why cops conducted stop, question and frisk. They saw people stopped people for a whole myriad of other issues. But the defense of stop, question, and frink as a principle means of getting guns off of the street gave the New York Times and mayor di blasio a rational that you get so few guns for so many thousands of stops, its creating this form of rachel racial profiling. For your viewers in new york this might not be easy to understand. Rose i think it is. I think important and easy to understand because there is fergson, missouri and a whole lot of other places where they are dealing with the same issue the relationship between police and community. Maybe a different community, but the issues seem to be how do you find the balance . I like using a medical comparison because everybody understands medical issues. Rose right. And i use that analysis that we developed in new york in the 1990s. The comstat was about gathering crime information to identify emerging trends. You go to a doc, he does tests. He determines you have cancer and he will treat it with radiation, chemotherapy. The correct is not to ate you, give you too much chemo. He will make you sicker. In the use of stop, question and frisk, it made the patient, particularly the africanamerican patient who was bearing the brunt of the treatment rose they felt more aggrieved . They felt more aggrieved. Its interesting because both ingberg and Police Commissioner kelley in a lot of the opinion polls the rated highly. He used to go to two or three africanamerican churches on sunday and personally was rated very highly but his Police Department and its policies were the cause of great consternation in that same community. There was a disconnect. Rose that was the background of the election . And di blasio effectively rode that horse to victory. Where i got on the horse with him was i believed it was being applied too extensively. It could be done in less quantity rose whats the result of the opinion thate mayor and you have had in terms of how you look at stop and frisk . Well in terms of stop, question, and frisk, one of the things that i think is misunderstood in the city, many of the opponents who were against it thought that the mayor was going to do away with it. You cant. Its a basic tool of american policing. The challenge is to do it in appropriate amounts to the issues that you are facing. So last year we did fewer than 50,000 stops, but we almost doubled the number of those stops that arrested in arrests. So reinforcing that the stops were doingbeing done appropriately and the fact that last year was the safest year in the history of the city in terms of overall crime, with 600,000 fewer stops, crime continued to go down. Many were predicting and particularly the tabloids that stop question and frisk being resulted so dramatically was that crime would go through the roof. I joked when the mayor was elected, everybody thought the four horses of the acopalyps were going to come charging and armagedon armagedon was arriving. Rose didnt happen . Didnt happen. Rose do you think the Police Officers and the police union under the mayor understand the mayor . Do they have a perceptioneception that you find unreasonable . The per i deal with the mayor, i spend a couple of hours a week, and we have a meeting every week, me and my Senior Leadership team, half a dozen and him. Rose a friday . Usually a friday meeting. He is much more pragmatic than dogmatic. I think his progressive ideas and his the idea that he is unabashedly to the left and a progressive but hes not dogmatic in reference to looking at issues. So, for example, the example of pragmatism, the broken windows philosophy, which i am a strong prop pony he want of strong practitioner of strong defender of, the mayor much to the chagrin supports broken windows but like stop, question and frisk, appropriately applied in the right amounts. A lot of his supporters dont understand that. They like stop, question, and risk. They want broken windows done away with. They dont fully appreciate how important it is to the safety, security and feeling of safety and security in the city. So there is an example of his pragmatism that he it would be easy enough to stay with the support base that got him elected. But, you know, hes really committed to trying to find the right balance in the city, not just for his base. Rose to explain to those police right. In terms of thats the man. I deal with him. A great part of my social circling. I live in the upper east side. So a lot of my Social Circle and friends are not particularly supportive of the mayor. Rose can you make the case for him . In some instances, i am able to make the case for him because i am able to speak from my area of responsibility. Rose when do you criticize him . The issues of criticism would be one in the sense of, in our conversations, publically you dont do that. If i have a difference, one of the good things about the relationship is i am free to offer that advice and counsel and i feel comfortable doing that that hes open to that type of input if you will. Rose when you tell the police you dont think its a good idea to turn your back, that it is a a funeral is not a place. It is a place for grieving, not grievance, your words your eloquent words, does that resonate with them. At first, it was heart felt for me. It could have been any mayor or any governor or any president. Thats how i feel about my profession and that expression of disrespect. It was not the place for it. And so thats why i wrote the memo that i did encouraging, for the second funeral, lets not repeat the mistake of the actions of the first. And the good news was, my understanding is at a larger funeral, 23,000 turn out for the first funeral for officer ramos and 28, an even larger turnout, the largest in the history of the city, probably the largest ever in america for a Police Officer, and there were several hundred in that ground of 28,000 who turned their backs, and although you would have some of the news reports would have you believe the vast majority were doing it. Rose between the first funeral and second funeral, you had a significant drop in people who turned their backs . My understanding of it, the numbers were much less than they were the first time which i felt good about but i would have felt much better if it had been no turning of the backs at all. But thats not something i can control. I can seek to influence and cajole, which i sought to do with my words because even though the officers are there in uniform, they are there on their own time. They are not there on duty. They are there on their own time. My ability to say you will not do that, i dont have that. Even if i had it, would i seek to use that power. Rose the mayor is anxious to heel this breach . Definitely. There is so much riding on healing the breach that he likes cops. He understands their importance, appreciates it and is really working very hard to understand the grievances, understand the issues. There