William Bratton

William Joseph Bratton CBE (born October 6, 1947) is an American businessman and former law enforcement officer who served two terms as the New York City Police Commissioner (1994–1996 and 2014–2016).

He attended Boston Technical High School, graduating in 1965.

From there, he served in the Military Police Corps of the United States Army during the Vietnam War.

Bratton returned to Boston in 1970 to start a police career in the Boston Police Department, and was sworn in as an officer in October 1970.

He was promoted to sergeant in July 1975 and to lieutenant in March 1978.

While serving as a Boston Police Officer, Bratton earned a Bachelor of Science in Public Service/Public Administration in 1975 from Boston State College (later absorbed by the University of Massachusetts-Boston).

In October 1980, at the age of 32 and ten years after his appointment to the BPD, Bratton was named as the youngest-ever Executive Superintendent of the Boston Police, the department's second highest post.

He was dismissed as executive superintendent after he told a journalist that his goal was to be the Police Commissioner.

He was reassigned to the position of Inspector of Bureaus, a sinecure which was responsible for liaison with minority and LGBTQ communities.

He was later brought back into police headquarters to handle labor relations and 9-1-1 related issues.

Between 1983 and 1986 Bratton was Chief of Police for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, following which he became Superintendent of the Massachusetts Metropolitan District Commission Police.

Bratton became the chief of the New York City Transit Police in 1990.

It was a period when the LAPD was struggling to rebuild trust after the 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney King, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the pervasive Division corruption involved in the late 1990s Rampart scandal, and the individual perjury by former LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman in 1995 that helped produce an acquittal in the O. J. Simpson murder case.

He presided over an era of reform and crime reduction.

Bratton was Superintendent in Chief of the Boston Police Department from 1992 until 1993, then he became that city's 34th Police Commissioner.

He holds the Department's highest award for valor.

He previously served as the Commissioner of the Boston Police Department (BPD) (1993–1994) and Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) (2002–2009).

He is the only person to have led the police departments of the United States' two largest cities – New York and Los Angeles.

Bratton began his police career at the Boston Police Department before becoming Police Commissioner in New York City, where his quality-of-life policy has been credited with reducing petty and violent crime.

In 1994, Bratton was appointed the 38th Commissioner of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) by Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

He cooperated with Giuliani in putting the controversial broken windows theory into practice.

He introduced the CompStat system of tracking crimes in New York City.

Critics have argued that CompStat has created perverse incentives for officers to allow crimes to go unreported, and has encouraged police brutality, citing that complaints by citizens that involved incidents where no arrest was made or summons was issued more than doubled during the Giuliani administration.

Bratton resigned in 1996, while under investigation by the Corporation Counsel for the propriety of a book deal that he signed while in office as well as accepting multiple unauthorized trips from corporations and individuals.

These offenses were generally considered minor.

Front and center were alleged personal conflicts with Giuliani, partly due to Giuliani's opposition to some of Bratton's reforms and partly due to Giuliani's belief that Bratton was getting more credit for the reduction in crime than Giuliani.

The experiences of Bratton and New York Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Maple were used as the inspiration of the television series The District.

He was recruited to lead the Los Angeles Police Department in 2002.

Bratton worked as a private consultant with Kroll Associates, also known as LAPD's Independent Monitor, until his appointment by the Mayor of Los Angeles James Hahn as the LAPD's 54th Chief of Police in October 2002.

Bratton was one of three candidates recommended to Hahn by the Los Angeles Police Commission under Commission President Rick J. Caruso.

Bratton has been criticized for his extensive travel; in 2005, he was out of town for a full third of the year on both official and personal business.

On June 19, 2007, the Los Angeles Police Commission reappointed Bratton to a second five-year term, the first reappointment of an LAPD chief in almost twenty years.

In March 2009, Councilman Herb Wesson proposed an amendment to the City Charter, allowing Bratton to serve a third consecutive term as Police Chief.

On September 11, 2009, he was awarded with the honorary title of Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II "in recognition of his work to promote cooperation between US and UK police throughout his distinguished career".

On August 12, 2011, Bratton said he was in talks with the British government to become an adviser on controlling the violence that had affected London the prior week.

In January 2014, Bratton returned to the post of Police Commissioner in New York City, and served until September 2016.

Bratton has served as an advisor on policing in several roles, including advising the British government and is currently the chairman of the Homeland Security Advisory Council for the U.S. government.

Bratton's policing style is influenced by the broken windows theory, a criminological theory of the norm-setting and signalling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior.

He advocates having an ethnically diverse police force representative of the population, being tough on gangs and having a strict no-tolerance of anti-social behavior.

Bratton is from the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.