Crime & Safety

De Blasio Appoints William Bratton NYPD Commissioner

Former NYPD, LAPD top cop returns to former post.

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio made his first major appointment Thursday, returning William Bratton, former NYPD and LAPD Commissioner, to the department's top post. 

De Blasio made the announcement on his Transition2013 website Thursday morning. 

"Together, we are going to preserve and deepen the historic gains we’ve made in public safety—gains Bill Bratton helped make possible," de Blasio said in a statement. "And we will do it by rejecting the false choice between keeping New Yorkers safe and protecting their civil rights. This is an administration that will do both."

Bratton was NYPD commissioner from 1994 to 1996 when he followed none other than Ray Kelly, the man he succeeds now as well. 

The mayor-elect made a point of drawing attention to Bratton's reputation for pioneering community policing and pledged that the two would work together to end the overuse of stop-and-frisk, the controversial tactic that has defined the Bloomberg-Kelly era in New York.


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