A well-regarded law enforcement official who has led police departments in New York, Los Angeles and Boston is returning to the Big Apple as its new police commissioner.
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio announced Thursday that William J. Bratton will be the city’s new top cop when he assumes office in January.
De Blasio ran as a critic of outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s heavy use of stop-and-frisk as a crime-fighting tactic, but Bratton himself expanded use of the tactic while in Los Angeles.
“Bill Bratton is a proven crime-fighter. He knows what it takes to keep a city safe and make communities full partners in the mission,” de Blasio said, CBS New York reports. “Together, we are going to preserve and deepen the historic gains we’ve made in public safety—gains Bill Bratton helped make possible.”
Bratton is well-regarded in law enforcement circles and was a front-runner for the position, the New York Times reports. He formerly led the NYPD, the country’s largest police department, in the mid-1990s, during which New York’s crime rate plummeted amid an increase in the use of aggressive police tactics. De Blasio and Bratton will face pressure to maintain the city’s low crime rate while responding to criticism overly-aggressive policing, particularly in minority communities.