Blair Gibbs: An American lesson for Britain’s crime fighters

The answer at the time was obvious and the point still stands today – effective police leadership is more important than the resources a force has at its disposal.

The crime-fighting achievements of Bill Bratton are truly remarkable. What really stands out from his record – in Boston, in New York, and, most recently, in Los Angeles – is not his support for a particular policing strategy or management technique, but his style of leadership.

Bratton’s record, particularly in New York in the mid-1990s, is now familiar in the United Kingdom, and his public appearances here still generate significant interest from both the public and police professionals.

Contrary to some lazy stereotypes, Bratton’s success in New York was not due to him being a tough, “zero tolerance” crime-fighter who busted criminal networks and came down hard on all offenders. Bratton’s leadership was much more sophisticated, intelligent and impressive than this caricature.

The real story of Bratton in New York was more to do with the changes he brought to the NYPD, than any change to how the police behaved on the streets. Central to it was a commitment to devolution, discretion and transparency.

For Bratton, fighting crime means effective policing; that is, policing in which responsibility is devolved to precinct (district) commanders who know best how to allocate resources and police their neighbourhoods.

Devolving decisions, rewarding talent and encouraging responsibility and innovation – the key elements of transformative leadership. Bratton himself was more than willing to be held personally accountable for his record, too.

As a high-profile police leader, Bratton knew he had an obligation to be accountable to the public for his department’s record on crime. And more importantly, he believed that the police could – and should – be measured by this.

There was this firm belief that the police can cut crime (“cops count”), and a real conviction that policing could make a difference; it wasn’t just a crime displacement exercise.

Central to Bratton’s policing approach was the CompStat system, an innovative police management tool developed by Bratton in the NYPD and now in use in major forces around the world, although not much in Britain.

This system sounds simple, even simplistic, but it works, and it was crucial to measurement and accountability. It provides the regular crime updates needed to enable police managers to allocate resources effectively and respond quickly, while also being the mechanism to hold local commanders to account.

These CompStat meetings are theatre, where rises in crime locally demand an explanation and poor performance is exposed and challenged. Another sort of leader would have felt threatened and exposed by such a tool.

Bratton understood that large organisations, especially urban police departments, could become demoralised and ineffective without strong, accountable leadership.

When Bratton arrived at the NYPD in 1994, the organisation had lost its way. The overriding objective of the department, as recounted in his memoir, Turnaround, was to avoid external criticism, not to fight crime.

There are clear parallels here with the Metropolitan Police, who in the last decade appeared more concerned with its own brand and image in the media, than its performance on crime.

What Bratton achieved in kick-starting New York’s turnaround is a proud legacy that continues to this day. New York remains the safest large city in the United States. The scale of the crime decline – particularly in New York but also in Los Angeles – was unparalleled. The turnarounds are now undisputed and they were not accidents of history.

Academic study strongly suggests they owed an enormous amount to effective policing, and to the bold tipping-point leadership that Bratton brought to the police departments in those cities, almost irrespective of the resources at his disposal.

As funding is reduced and police officer numbers fall in England and Wales in the years ahead, this lesson, above all others, should resonate.

Policing is vital to a safe and prosperous society, but it is not about how many cops there are or how much money is spent – it is about leadership.

Elements of British policing remain the best in the world, but we have much to learn from the American experience and from police leaders like Bratton, who demonstrate what can be done to fight crime with the right policies, the right attitude and the right leadership.

Blair Gibbs is head of the crime and justice unit at the Policy exchange. This is the preface from a new publication, Fighting Crime and Disorder, Policing Experience from America, which is published by the think-tank tomorrow.