A flood of predictable reactions — from police and protest circles — greeted the announcement Tuesday that New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton is leaving the post in September. The 68-year-old is the most influential American law enforcement executive in modern times, the author of policing strategies that have shaped relations between police and the communities they serve, for better and for worse.
Among the critics, the New York-based Communities United for Police Reform released a statement asserting that Bratton “was no reformer to communities impacted by abusive and discriminatory policing.” Civil rights attorney Darius Charney, who successfully sued the NYPD over its stop-and-frisk practices, wrote that Bratton leaves behind “a complicated legacy,” having begun to wean the NYPD off of the invasive stop-and-frisk, but having championed the “broken windows” school of policing resented by many minority communities. ...