The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (26 page)

Jim O'Leary was a remarkably honorable person, and I liked and learned from his management style. His basic philosophy was that you pick good people and let them do their jobs. He was the boss, there was never any question about that, but he gave his people room to maneuver. It was a strategy that turned the responsibility back onto the worker.

Some bosses, through heavy-handed threats, actually put a cap on creativity and encourage the people under them to underachieve. “This is what he wants, the son-of-a-bitch boss? I'm giving him this and not one iota more.” It's up to the manager to identify good workers and support them, and this was one of O'Leary's strengths. Many people are capable of producing at a greater capacity when they are given greater authority. I certainly was. He trusted me to do my best, and I went out of my way to live up to that trust. If I failed, I would have failed both him and myself.

From 1983 to 1986, crime on the MBTA decreased by 27 percent. Ridership also rose as the system modernized and the police department expanded. We applied to the National Commission on Accreditation for Police Agencies and met eight hundred standards of excellence to become only the thirteenth police department in the country to be accredited. In many respects, it was like getting a college diploma to hang on the wall; we were a certified professional police organization—quite a turnaround in three years.

Unfortunately, Mary had been right: My job took a toll on our marriage. In the summer of 1983, only a few months after I'd been sworn in, we separated. We made several attempts at reconciliation, but we were going in very different directions and we were ultimately divorced.

While our divorce was pending, I attended a reception to honor the Suffolk County district attorney Newman Flanigan, held at Anthony's Pier 4 restaurant on Boston's waterfront. While circulating, I ran into a cop who had worked for me at District 4, Frank Dewan. Dewan had been partners with a cop I'd come on the job with named Joe Fiandaca. While Dewan and I were talking, we both couldn't help but notice three very attractive young women talking across the room. The one with her back to us turned, saw the two of us, and smiled.

What an incredible smile! Was she smiling at me? I thought so. This extraordinarily beautiful young woman walked over, and I straightened my tie. She said hello and gave Dewan a kiss. Dewan is about six foot two, this
woman was five feet, so he had to lean way down to accept it. I was crestfallen, but only for a moment. Dewan introduced us.

“Bill, this is Cheryl Fiandaca. Cheryl, Bill Bratton.”

“Oh, I know who he is,” she said. “How are you?” I must have looked startled. “You don't remember me, do you?”

“No,” I said with a laugh. “And I don't know why!”

“Well, we met one time before.”

“When was that?”

“Oh, 1970.” That was thirteen years ago. From the looks of this extremely attractive woman, she must have been about twelve at the time. “You and my brother Joe came on the job together.”

Then it clicked. I was immediately smitten. She was just so beautiful, so vivacious, so alive. We talked for a few minutes, and then she excused herself and walked into the next room.

I watched her go. “Frank,” I said, “excuse me.” I followed her.

She was standing talking to some other guy when I came up and said, “Hello again.” She made the introductions.

“Can I get you a drink?” her companion asked her. She said sure. He went off.

When I was a teenager, I had never gotten up the nerve to ask out Camille Grasso, and for one long summer I had sat next to Irene Walsh, another teenage crush, and hadn't put my arm around her, let alone kiss her. But with this woman I was different. We began talking, and I couldn't stop. When her companion came back, I took her drink from his hand, thanked him, and gave it to her. He got the message and didn't stick around. Cheryl thought that was the greatest move.

When the function ended, we went to the upstairs lounge and stayed for another two hours. I did most of the talking. When it was time to leave, I walked her to her car. It was her father's car, a big old blue Chevy. We exchanged phone numbers. She stood up on her tiptoes and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I'll call you,” I told her. I had been struck by the thunderbolt.

Cheryl went home and told her mother, Lucy, “Mom, I met the guy I'm going to marry.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. He's going to call tomorrow. I think I'll wear my new light-blue suit.”

I called the next day, of course, and invited her to lunch at Tia's on the Waterfront, a new restaurant. She had me pegged. Cheryl was going to
law school and working at the district attorney's office, and when I saw her walking down the hill from the Suffolk County Courthouse, she was dressed to the nines. All I could think was “Wow!”

I don't think I saw the same outfit on Cheryl more than once during the first year we dated. What I didn't know was that she and her four sisters were all the same size, so they had five wardrobes to go through, and maybe fifty different pairs of pumps. Cheryl always looked great. She was also smart, funny, ambitious, supportive, and totally wonderful. She came from a large Italian family. Her mother, on a moment's notice, could prepare a meal for from two to twenty people. Her father, Joe, was the popular first magistrate of the East Boston District Court. Cheryl and I married in 1986.

JOE JORDAN WAS IN TROUBLE. HE HAD A DRINKING PROBLEM THAT WAS HAV
ing a disastrous impact on his ability to run the department. He had checked himself into a detox center in Rhode Island. Someone tipped off the press, and it became a front-page story. Jordan was evidently a closet drinker, after working hours; I had shared an office and bathroom with him for over two years and never suspected. Once again, speculation was high that Jordan would step down, but Mayor Kevin White talked him into staying, at least through the end of White's third term in 1985. Mayor White was leaving after three terms to accept a teaching position at Boston University.

Ray Flynn, a former South Boston city councillor and a long shot in a crowded field of candidates, was elected Boston's new mayor. Flynn wanted to appoint his own commissioner, but Jordan's term didn't expire for almost a year, and he wasn't moving. The city was unwilling to expend funds to buy him out, so they were stalemated. Boston had a new, progressive mayor and a status quo, lame-duck police commissioner.

My longtime friend and confidant Jack Gifford became a key player and Flynn advisor in the selection process for Jordan's successor. Gifford told me my name was being floated. I had the background. I had been screwed by the outgoing cabal but had showed the proper humility and
proved my loyalty to the organization. I had turned around the MBTA and increased my recognizability, credibility, and professional credentials.

I was fairly confident I was going to get the job of my dreams and be the new commissioner, and I wanted to hit the ground running. I started putting my team in place, my closest friends and members of my study group during all these years. Jack Gifford would be my chief of the Bureau of Field Services. Al Sweeney would come over from the MBTA and be executive superintendent. I put a lot of time and attention into pro-ducing a detailed manifesto outlining exactly what should be done to turn the department around, in expectation of meeting with Flynn. I tried not to get my hopes up, but there's only so much negative thinking I'm capable of. I am more likely to be an optimist—Yes, I
am
going to be police commissioner!—and rather than prepare for the worst, I prepared for the best.

Ray Flynn appointed Mickey Roache, my old sector-car partner, my old college classmate, the guy I had encouraged to take the sergeant's exam, the guy I'd brought into headquarters. Roache was an acting lieutenant, not even a deputy superintendent; this was a tremendous jump. This straightforward, priestlike, kind of naive, hardworking Caspar Milquetoast guy was going to be in charge of the Byzantine backbiting empire that was the Boston Police. Everyone was flabbergasted, nobody more than me.

It turns out that Mickey Roache and Ray Flynn were lifelong friends. They had played stickball together in Southie. (“South Boston boy, your honor.”) Mayor Flynn justified his choice with Roache's hard work, his loyalty, and his continuing success with the Community Disorders Unit. What Flynn was really looking for was a guy he knew, a guy who would be very responsive to him, a guy he could trust, a guy who was not going to give the mayor any problems. From Flynn's viewpoint, since I was known as an independent who was comfortable in the public eye, perhaps I wasn't that guy.

So Mickey Roache became police commissioner. Who does he go to for his top command? My team, my friends, my guys. Roache named Jack Gifford his superintendent-in-chief. He named Al Sweeney superintendent of internal affairs. Sweeney and I loved working together, and we were doing a great job at the MBTA, but I couldn't blame him for going back. Didn't I want to go back? Mickey MacDonald was appointed chief of the Bureau of Field Services.

Roache had the right guys, but he put them in exactly the wrong positions. I knew these guys extremely well. I had studied with them, I had
worked with them, and I had planned for years how I would deploy them if I became commissioner. Al Sweeney was one of the nicest guys in the world, but the secrecy and edge of internal affairs requires a hardnose. He was too caring, too sensitive, not hard enough for the investigations he had to run. Jack Gifford was a hardnose when he needed to be, and one of the smartest people I'd ever met, but also one of the most
disorganized
organized people I'd ever met. He had file folders, plans, charts, and maps, but he went in fifty different directions and often couldn't control the things he set in motion. He would have been an excellent chief of BFS, controlling the patrol forces, or head of internal affairs. Sweeney was incredibly well organized and had the ability to control large amounts of information. With my systems, Sweeney's organization, Gifford's control of the streets, and the seasoning and maturity that Mickey MacDonald would bring, we would have had a tremendous effect on the Boston Police and the city itself.

I was desperate to get in. There I was at the MBTA, and after all the planning and dreaming, there was my team running the Boston Police Department—
without me
! Gifford and Sweeney arranged for me to meet with Roache to congratulate him and throw in my two cents about what could be done in the department. I'd been looking at the BPD for ten years, I had a few ideas. I let it be known that, if he was interested, I was willing to step down as chief of the MBTA to be appointed as a superintendent in some capacity in the Boston Police.

Roache and I were friendly, but Flynn quickly surrounded him with City Hall cronies. He was going to run that police department from top to bottom. As much as I was willing to give up my own shop to work in someone else's—for the reason that some day, some way, I wanted to run that department—nothing was offered. My impression was that I was viewed as perhaps too independent, too much of a fox in the henhouse. I was on the outside looking in: It was the ultimate irony.

With the Boston Police Department out of my reach and my position at the MBTA rapidly becoming a maintenance job, I set my sights on another turnaround and career-advancing opportunity: the Metropolitan Police. The Mets, as they were called, made up the third largest police department in Massachusetts behind the BPD and the state police. They were a division of the Metropolitan District Commission, a state organization responsible for parks and reservoirs and for policing many of the beaches, parkways, and highways in the eastern part of the state, particularly in the greater Boston area. The MDC's dynamic new commissioner was Bill Geary. I had been watching Geary, and I was very impressed.

For many years, the MDC had been under attack because of its inefficiency and incompetence, and Geary had set about to change its image. I started seeing stories about the organization and their new police cars. That kind of approach paralleled my own. I knew the cops would work better in more functional surroundings, and that if they looked better, the public would give them more attention and respect. Some years back, the MDC cars were orange and blue; the cops looked like they were delivering for Howard Johnson's. Who would put cops in HoJo cars? No wonder the cops hated working for that agency. Then, because the MDC was a parks agency, the cars had been repainted green and white. They still looked awful. Geary had taken the old green-and-white monstrosities and brought in an outside consulting company to completely redesign them. The new design, markings, and blue-white-and-gray paint scheme gave the Mets the best-looking police cruisers in the state. Cops liked them and began to work better as a result. Geary got press coverage on both the design change and the results.

Geary was very much like Steve Dunleavy in his sense of marketing and organization, and as he went about the business of reengineering the MDC, he paid a lot of attention to appearances. It was the kind of thing you'd notice when you were driving on MDC-policed roads: new and attractive signs signifying that someone new and improved was in charge and paying attention. Also like Dunleavy, Geary knew how to market his organization. He always got good stories on TV and in the papers about his new signs. Geary was a master, and I watched him to pick up pointers. Like Jim O'Leary, he also picked good people, and although more hands-on, let them run their divisions.

In 1985, MDC Police Superintendent Tommy Keough resigned. I had two years at the MBTA, my reputation was solid, and I fully expected to be interviewed as his successor. I was very disappointed when Geary decided to stay in-house and promoted as superintendent Nelson Barner; I thought I had positioned myself for the next step, that I'd at least get an overture. I continued about my business, but 1985 was a year of discontent.

I didn't have to wait too long. In 1986, major corruption scandals unfolded within the Metropolitan Police. Captain Gerry Clemente was the man in charge of the Metropolitan Police at night. He had the keys to all the state office buildings and, among other crimes, broke into the Civil Service Commission offices, stole the department's promotion exams, and was involved in selling them for around $3,000 a pop. Many senior people in the Mets were thought to have attained their positions by buying those
exams. Clemente was a real rogue. As well as stealing the exams, he changed the test scores of people he didn't like. Clemente was also involved in a major bank break-in in Medford over the Memorial Day weekend. Superintendent Barner was convicted of perjury and sentenced to four years in federal prison for his involvement in the exam controversy.