Turnaround: how americas top cop reversed the crime epidemic essay

Turnaround: How Americas Top Cop Reversed the Crime EpidemicWilliam Bratton through the book “ Turnaround: How Americas Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic” talks about everything right from his childhood days in Boston to his falling out with New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The book begins with an interesting incident of Bratton childhood when he was just one and half year old and his mother had caught him directing traffic in the street near to his Boston home. But the actual focus of Bratton and his coauthor, Peter Knobler, has been his efforts in revitalizing the police departments first in Boston and later in New York. The book provides an insight into various innovative ideas, techniques and concepts that Bratton envisaged during his tenure as a Police Commissioner in above mentioned two cities. Some of the pioneering efforts that have got a mention in the book are the community policing and sanitizing the Boston’s subway system. His great insight of crime and criminal activities provided various new concepts to the police department. The most simple but effective was severe crackdown on minor offences as Bratton had a view that those who commit smaller crimes would also commit serious ones underground.

During his tenure as NYPD top cop, the city’s crime rate dropped over 10 percent a year.                                                                                             In Turnaround, Bratton has described several successful police initiatives including the use computer based crime mapping that later helped the police in zeroing to the crime hot spots. These crime prone areas were later cleaned up through various tools of law enforcement. A number of minor criminal activities like panhandling and prostitution were curtailed through “ quality of life enforcement” tool. The same tool was used to manage squeegee kids so that the streets should appear safe as well as less inviting to worse or serial criminals. The accountability factor was introduced and police commanders from all districts had to be up to date about the progress and problems of the locality they are in charge. The book contains details that would inspire everyone who really wish to deliver in a safe and sound social structure.

At the time when William Bratton was sworn in as New York City’s police commissioner, NYPD’s finest talents had almost given up the urge to fight and prevent crime and were almost hiding. Several departments like Narcotics, Vice, Auto Theft, and the Gun Squads were like muted spectators with low morale while the criminals were rampaging all across the city. With the handful of tasks, Bratton made the most glaring promise that the NYPD would fight crime with all possible force and energy with sole purpose to win. Initially it appeared as a futile press release but Bratton delivered.

He changed everything that appeared to be vital for enabling a change. The best of talents were given responsibilities of critical value and hence instilled pride in the force. He listened to everyone; the people in the neighborhoods, the shop owners and to the cops on the street and achieved extraordinary results. Within a period of two years, crime rate in New York City went down considerably. In the book Turnaround, Bratton has revealed the very basic of his crime prevention policies and how policing strategies could be strengthen to attain cutting-edge advantage over criminals. Bratton who has a strong track record bringing extraordinary change in the performance of the several police departments, turned around the MBTA Police (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority), the Metropolitan Police (Massachusetts), the New York Transit Police, Boston Police, and NYPD.

Petty and small crimes form the platform for breeding more serious crime and Bratton convinced several law enforcement experts through the Broken Windows theory. Thorough analysis of crime statistics, by location/time/etc. was smartly applied by Bratton so that the law enforcers could determine how to deploy police resources. Hence, the use of technology was among the most news-making strategy that Bratton applied. With his team, he developed Compstat through which he amalgamated computer based statistics analysis with accountability factor. Though sometimes Critics had added that it was not just Bratton’s effort that yielded success in New York but actually strong American economy that created massive employment was the reason behind reduction of crime in New York as well as the whole nation.

But the same critics cannot deny the fact that the book Turnaround explains some of the extraordinary ways to manage the police department and how the same can use laws, technology and human resources in causing absolute impact on crime. Today, New York’s improved quality of life in a secure and crime free environment is a success story for the whole nation and sufficient recognition must be given to William Bratton for his contribution to the state and nation. His strategies should be analyzed further and be implemented by police forces all across the world. In Turnaround, Bratton shows how the war on crime can be won once and for all. The book Turnaround is not just a page-turner or a work of literature, but it’s a masterpiece of policing and techniques of law enforcing laced with innovative ideas that Bratton introduced into the police department with sole purpose being the curbing the crime.

The book is therefore should be a mini-Bible to everyone who is concerned about crime be it a professional from a law enforcement agency or a regular common citizen.