The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (33 page)

Again, we got multiple benefits from this action. We picked up a lot of wanteds, and we alerted the neighborhood to the fact that the Transit Police were not playing games. We took low performers on our force and partnered them with high performers, under the direction of a supervisor; our sergeants established accountability, and our cops, who had worked solo for their entire careers, had the opportunity to be part of a team. They were making arrests and having fun. And most of all, by catching the bad guys, we closed the loophole through which people were disappearing from the justice system.

We started bringing more people to court than the system was used to handling, and it was my job to alert the D.A.s and judges. Once in court, we tried to get our warrants prioritized, to expedite the trials of bail defaulters and thieves and the rest of our prisoners. We tried to get the courts to hold them; after all the effort we expended to track these people down, we didn't want them running straight out the door.

To support the operation I had to muscle the NYPD and schmooze with the district attorneys. Crime went down, morale went up. It was a great success.

Wolfpacks were another tremendous source of fear among passengers in the transit system and the city at large. Gangs of kids, teenaged and younger, swarmed through trains robbing, mugging, and terrorizing riders. Sometimes we would catch one, but the rest of the pack usually got away. Under police guidelines, one arrest clears a crime; if you catch one lone wolf, your statistics look good, so cops had no incentive to bust their butts to nab any more. Meanwhile, half a dozen kids were out there preying on their next victims, and we had done nothing whatsoever about reducing crime. We wouldn't quit until we had gotten two, three, four, five in the wolfpack, all the way down the line. Once we got these wolfpack members to court, we tied them to multiple cases and showed Family
Court judges that these young kids were, in fact, repeat offenders and career criminals. Building strong cases against them helped assure convictions and stiff sentences, sending them away and deterring others. We dried up wolfpacks in the New York City subway because we were not going to hide behind numbers. We were going to get everybody.

Maple had charts on his wall much like the ones I'd had on mine in District 4. He was a great collector of statistics, and he recognized the tremendous potential that computerization held for the Transit Police. Maple was able to gather the information transit had in its various subsystems and, through use of the department's computers, bring it all into his office, where he analyzed it.

We had been operating the warrant squad, the plainclothes and decoy units, and the Central Robbery Squad as separate units. Now, we aimed to weave a seamless web through which no criminal could slip. Ultimately, it became clear that we should combine these operations under one roof with one man in charge. Maple was clearly the man. I greatly expanded the Central Robbery Squad, promoted Maple to detective lieutenant, and put it all under his command. In October 1991 I promoted him to special assistant to the chief.

Esserman had been doing some independent work on creating a joint warrant squad with the New York State Division of Parole. They didn't have vehicles, we didn't have office space. Esserman traded unmarked transit cars to them for the whole first floor of their building across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Forty-second Street. We were in business.

Central Robbery was Jack's life. He lived there. He used to walk around the squad room at night in his Burberry raincoat that doubled as a bathrobe.

Then Brian Watkins was killed.

Watkins and his family had come to New York City from Provo, Utah, in the summer of 1990 to attend the United States Open tennis championships. At 10:20 Sunday night on Labor Day weekend, they were standing on the uptown platform of the D train at Fifty-third Street and Seventh Avenue when a wolfpack of about eight kids robbed them at knifepoint. Watkins's father was slashed when they cut his back pocket to get at his wallet. His mother was punched and kicked in the face. His brother and sister-in-law were roughed up. When Watkins tried to intervene, he was stabbed in the chest with a spring-handled butterfly knife. He died that night. Brian Watkins was twenty-two years old.

The gang ran off with $203 and some credit cards. They were found two hours later dancing at the club Roseland.

This was a horrible tragedy for Brian Watkins and his family. It was also among the worst nightmares the city and the Transit Police could imagine. A tourist in the subway during a high-profile event with which the mayor is closely associated (Mayor Dinkins, a tennis fan, was instrumental in keeping the U.S. Open in New York) gets stabbed and killed by a wolfpack. The murder made international headlines. Through good police work, we made arrests within two hours, but that wasn't going to bring the young man back.

Two days later, I got a call out of the blue from Richard Girgenti, Governor Mario Cuomo's criminal-justice coordinator. The governor understood the impact this killing could have on New York tourism and responded. “Can you put together a proposal as to what you would do if we were to give you forty million dollars?” Girgenti asked. “Believe me,” I told him, “I can get that together for you very quickly.”

This was the turnaround I needed. Working with the MTA and the Transit Authority, Governor Cuomo was able to identify forty million dollars in the existing budget that could be immediately reallocated to the Transit Police.

I took the first ten million and bought each cop in the department a new, more powerful, and reliable walkie-talkie. Once again, I got multiple benefits: The cops finally got new equipment and I gained a significant amount of patrol time each day when they no longer had to stand in line, twenty at a time, signing their radios in and out at the end of their shifts. I had asked them to work hard, and I felt they should know I would deliver in return. I visited several commands and made ceremonial presentations of the new equipment.

We spent ten million dollars to repair some of the dead spots in the radio system; this was the quick fix we'd needed. A couple of million dollars went to the new vehicles I'd been looking for, which improved response time and production and department morale. Two million went to renovate and upgrade the Transit Police Academy. I put money toward a transition in armaments, should we get Transit Authority approval. Ten million went toward overtime pay, to put the equivalent of two hundred extra officers in the system.

Within a few months, due to our increased manpower, new strategies, better communications, and improved equipment, the crime rate began to drop like a rock.

The death of Brian Watkins was a terrible tragedy that, ironically, ultimately became the catalyst for the turnaround of crime in New York City. With his immediate offer of money that Bob Kiley was able to divert from other projects, Mario Cuomo was the primary sponsor of our efforts. The governor has never received the tremendous credit he is due for his role in the reduction of crime in New York City. The money that he and Kiley provided was the catalyst that significantly accelerated the turnaround of the Transit Police.

We had already begun to redesign the transit uniforms. High-quality and well-designed uniforms contribute to a cop's self-image and personal pride and to the public's confidence in its police force. I put together a uniform committee and encouraged input from all officers. The committee looked at many options and came back with new shirts, patches, and an interesting recommendation: commando sweaters, with epaulets, very military, very smart. I approved it immediately. They gave us a very distinctive look and were also practical, much better than the coats we had worn before.

Everything the Transit Police had done in the past had been an attempt to disguise its identity and to look more like city cops. Even our patch used to hide the word “transit.” We redesigned it. We designed recruiting posters: “Second to None. Join the Force on the Move.” Transit cops, known for generations as “tunnel rats,” liked that.

We were taking care of their interests and they responded. “New uniforms? New cars? New radios? Yeah, I'll shine my shoes. I'll cut my hair. I'll go to the gym.” They had regenerated their pride.

We established a Chief's Award; we generated a document on the computer, lacquered it to a walnut plaque, and I personally made ceremonial presentations to deserving officers. Al O'Leary in the media services office sent a picture of the ceremony to the press.

When one of our cops did something good, we brought the officer to the press office, and O'Leary called up reporters. “I've got Officer Smith here, the guy who saved that pregnant lady.” Reporters used to tease him—in fact, they'd throw it in his face: “The NYPD won't produce their cops when they're heroes; over at the transit public-relations office you handcuff your cops to the chair.”

The Transit Police, which had been the conscripts of the law-enforcement world, were becoming the Marine Corps.

I had earmarked a portion of Governor Cuomo's $40 million for the Transit Police's transition in weaponry from the .38 six-shooter revolver to
the nine-millimeter fifteen-round semiautomatic. I thought the change-over made a lot of sense and gave us multiple benefits.

Cops in New York widely felt that their weapons were inappropriate for their environment. They felt they were being outgunned. Transit cops, in particular, patrolled by themselves in a workplace where communication was difficult and they were at risk. They didn't often have gunfights, but on those occasions they were going up against people armed with nine-millimeters or worse. The NYPD standard issue was the .38 six-shooter; the Transit Police standard issue was the .38 six-shooter with a less powerful bullet. It seemed very clear to me that a change was justified and due.

I invited a group of armorers to come for a two-day seminar. We found that more than half the U.S. police organizations, including thirty of the thirty-one largest, six major transit police departments, the FBI, and the Secret Service had made or were making the transition to the semiautomatic. It was more accurate and more reliable, had more capacity, and was easier to load than the .38. I wrote a letter to the MTA board of directors requesting the change.

The response was explosive. I had stumbled on a cutting-edge political issue much larger than I had realized. Mayor Dinkins was adamantly opposed to the change. NYPD Commissioner Lee Brown was opposed, as were Ray Kelly and various community groups.
The New York Times
ran editorials against it. All of them had their reasons.

I suspect that Mayor Dinkins and Commissioner Brown felt uncomfortable with the political ramifications of switching to the more powerful firearm. Ray Kelly, as a career NYPD commander, was concerned about the cost of retraining his entire department.
The New York Times
, and the community groups, which didn't trust the police to begin with, felt it was an unnecessary escalation of what they saw as the war in the streets of New York.

I also think it reflected the fact that the leadership of the NYPD wasn't comfortable with the professional abilities of the cops they were leading. They may not have trusted their own systems to train and supervise their people to use these weapons appropriately. These concerns overrode the safety issues that the cops were voicing. The cops, feeling increasingly unsafe on the job, felt that this administration did not care about them.

The combined forces of New York politics were aligned against us, and the MTA board was extremely political—some members were appointed by the mayor himself. In addition, the NYPD didn't have nine-millimeters, and transit never got anything better than the city police. These roadblocks made me even more determined.

I was careful and emphasized that my main concerns were public and police safety. NYPD cops travel in pairs, I told the board, so they always have at least two guns and twelve shots between them. Our officers work by themselves. In addition to the .38 six-shot, most were permitted to carry a smaller second weapon, often in an ankle or waist holster. We were effectively authorizing officers to carry two weapons totaling twelve rounds, while I was asking for one weapon that carried fifteen. In a struggle, current regulations were doubling the potential for a gun to be taken away. In addition, the nine-millimeter was more accurate. We had done the testing, and if you let a round go in a subway station, with its concrete walls and ceramic tiles and steel pillars, it could turn into a lethal game of pinball. There was less of a ricochet factor with the more accurate nine-millimeter and its increased stopping power.

I didn't duck the issues they raised. We discussed police shootings and civilian complaints. The semiautomatic sounds as if it could be used to spray indiscriminate fire, I acknowledged, but it does in fact require the shooter to pull the trigger for each shot. The round itself would not be the full metal jacket used by the NYPD but a slower, controlled-expansion round, which reduces the risk of ricochet damage. Our weapon would require more effort to pull the trigger for each round fired, the so-called “New York trigger.”

The Transit Police, I told them, would adopt the semiautomatic over four years in a carefully staged and thorough training program that would qualify about twenty officers per week. Along with instructing officers in the maintenance and use of the weapon, the training program would reinforce and emphasize the principles of the department's deadly-force policy. Our highest priority was the protection of human life, and our officers were instructed to use every other reasonable alternative before resorting to firearms. The firearm was viewed as a defensive weapon, not a tool of apprehension. It would give officers greater control over violent incidents in the subway. The more control, the less likely the incidents would cause injury or death.

As a manager, I trusted cops because I trusted the training I would give them, something the NYPD leadership did not. I knew this because Kelly had raised the issues while arguing with me. I had confidence in my organization.