The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (41 page)

Maple was a holy terror. Timoney called him a pit bull; he was absolutely relentless. Once he came up with an idea, you couldn't dissuade him, you couldn't knock him off course. He knew the criminal mind—“It isn't a very sophisticated mind,” Timoney loved to add—he knew the bad guys’ vulnerabilities, he knew what made them tick.

I wanted to know the size of our crime problem. Maple knew New York City's 1993 crime figures off the top of his head: 1,946 murders, 86,000 robberies, 99,000 burglaries, 112,000 car thefts. (Jack knew his figures cold. People in the office started calling him “Rain Man.”) He told me, “Look, we've got to track something else here. How many people are shot in this city?” We found that 5,861 people were shot in New York City in 1993. The difference between a shooting and a murder is usually a quarter of an inch; they hit an artery, or they don't. “Okay,” he announced, “
this
is the size of the problem.”

John Miller had developed a system in which he could receive breaking information over his beeper. Maple told operations, “I want a phone call at home every time we fire a gun and hit somebody.”

They were a little put back. “You know how many times we're gonna have to beep you?”

“Yeah, I know exactly. There were 442 incidences of police firing their guns last year, and I think we hit about eighty. Plus, I want to get beeped from the detectives on every murder. I don't care what time it is, I want to be beeped.”

A few days into my term, I said to Maple, “You know, it doesn't seem that busy around here.” In my morning summary, I was getting reports of a water-main break here, a power outage there, and a brief synopsis of major crime events.

“Commissioner, are you jerking me or what? We're living in a fool's paradise. It's like pulling teeth to find out how many people got murdered last week.”

“Louie,” he said to Chief of Patrol Louis Anemone, “we need to know where we're at, weekly, with the crime.”

This was a first for the NYPD. They only compiled crime statistics for Uniform Crime Reporting purposes, a collecting point for the FBI, and
then only quarterly. As far as the department had been concerned, statistics were not for use in combating crime, they were only for keeping score at the end of the year. Even then, the only statistics they paid attention to were the robberies. But even that was smoke and mirrors. Each precinct was required to send robbery statistics to headquarters, but no innovations came out of it. Nobody used them for anything.

“The first week they gave me a pile of papers that were written in fuckin’ crayon,” Maple complained. That just got him mad. Then Joe Borrelli's staff said, “The chief of detectives has decided you can only get this monthly.”

“You know,” he told them, “I'm not really concerned about what his thoughts are. We're gonna get this weekly now.” Maple knew he had my backing. I had told the command staff that when Maple spoke, he spoke for me. I was sworn in on January 10. February 7, we began getting our full set of weekly figures. And, more important, we were going to use them.

Maple pored over the stats. “Louie,” he said, “in every precinct they should have maps of robberies, of burglaries, of shootings, narcotics arrests, gun arrests, so they can see how to deploy. There's no maps in these precincts. Whatever maps there are are four years old. You gotta have them up-to-date. We've got a war on crime, how do you go to war without a map? Hannibal had a map and that was in 218
B
.
C
.” Needless to say, I thought this was a great idea.

The NYPD was a fearful, centralized bureaucracy with little focus on goals. We created a crisis of confidence and encouraged everyone in it to rise to the challenge. The NYPD was not nearly as good as everyone thought it was, and it certainly was not as good as my team thought it could be.

Our first initiative was the Gun Strategy. We expanded on the concepts I had presented to Giuliani when I'd been interviewed in November.

When we arrived, suspects arrested in possession of a weapon in New York City were not necessarily asked,
“Where'd you get the gun?”
You'd think it would be one of the first questions, but often it never got asked. There was an eight-page order stating precisely what an officer was to do with a gun suspect: Run the person's stats through a computer to see if he or she was one of the 33,000 known gun violators who had been locked up previously on weapons charges. If they were, a special team of detectives came down to interview them about the case—not about the gun and where it might have come from; about that particular case. If they weren't previous violators, the detectives didn't talk to them at all. Maple found
that even once these reports had been taken, the department was six months behind in filing them. The order also said arresting officers were supposed to turn gun arrests into confidential informants (CIs).

Under the new gun strategy, we first tried to build a solid case and get the suspect's inculpatory statement. Then,
every
gun suspect was interviewed by a detective. This was an important innovation. Let's actually get some bad guys. The detectives and arresting officers pursued any and all accomplices. As at transit, we made it department policy to arrest everyone involved in a crime, not just one perp to get it off the books. It's a cop's assumption that someone involved in a gun arrest is likely not a first timer. As at transit, we checked for wants, and if we found them we called in complainants from those other crimes to pick the suspects from photo arrays or out of lineups. Last, but not least, we asked the suspects
“Where did you get the gun?”
and
“Do you know anybody else with more guns?”
Our policy was: “Just ask.”

Maple understood that people like to talk. Often, by this time, the suspect was willing to deal. We then got search warrants, hit the houses where the other guns were kept, busted the occupants, brought in more guns and suspects, and started the process all over again. We matched guns used in more than one crime and traced them to illegal sellers across the country. It was elementary, but it had never been done.

Maple was excellent at devising strategies, but when he put them on paper something was missing. Assigned the task of creating the first strategy, he assembled the traditional NYPD bureaucracy, and after a week of hard work and bitter debate they delivered a document to me.

I was aghast. The document didn't state the problem, it didn't address the issues, it didn't present the vision I wanted to impart. It was quite clear that within the department there were those who resisted the idea of criti-cizing the organization or even endorsing the concept of great change, because that would imply criticism of the department and its past leaders. I was very disappointed. Maple had the concepts and could articulate them with great flair orally, but they did not translate onto paper. I turned to John Linder to take over the writing process.

After talking with me at length to find out what I wanted, Linder crafted a twenty-page booklet stating the problem and our current practice in dealing with it and then outlining our new methods of attacking it. Linder, Maple, and others on Maple's task force had heated disagreements over the language and presentation. Linder felt we couldn't write about new ideas without comparing them to the old. Maple felt that would be
taking unnecessary swipes at previous administrations and at Ray Kelly in particular, many members of whose inner circle were now key players in my administration and found themselves in the difficult position of criticizing their former boss. They fought it out, the marketer and the strategist, and ultimately Linder won my support. We hammered out a strategy that said what it meant and would be clear to the cops. For example, after stating that in 1993, 11,222 arrests were made for crimes in which a firearm was confiscated and that it was department policy to try and turn those arrested into CIs, the written strategy said, “Fact: The combined efforts [of the NYPD detectives] yielded four confidential informants.” It was brutal but effective.

We put the Gun Strategy on paper and sent it over to City Hall. All written strategies were to be approved by the Hall before they were announced to the public. The mayor had campaigned on the issue of crime reduction and understandably needed to be involved in the announcements of initiatives on the issue. It stalled. They questioned when we should do it, how we should do it, why we should do it. They nitpicked it endlessly without ever changing it substantively. The mind games designed to show who was in control had begun. Getting City Hall approval for each successive strategy was a tortuous process and to the best of my recollection never added anything substantive to the documents.

When they finally approved the strategy, Miller said, “If we're going to get this on the air and in the papers, we're going to have to put on a fairly decent dog and pony show.” (Miller knew, as I did, that cops weren't going to get the news of the Gun Strategy from some interoffice memo; they were going to see it on TV or read about it in the
Daily News.
) He asked Ray O'Donnell, the day lieutenant who effectively ran the press office in Miller's absence, how many guns we could get. The answer from the property clerk's office was that they could probably put together around ten thousand guns. “What do ten thousand guns look like?” he asked. “A lot.” We then got word from the mayor's communications director, Cristyne Lategano, “No guns.”

“No guns!” Miller said. “What do you mean?”

“The mayor doesn't like guns.”

“Well, we don't like guns either. That was kind of the point.”

“He doesn't want any guns at City Hall. He's worried that people are going to ask him to hold one and it's going to look stupid.”

Miller said, “Come on, Cristyne, this is the guy who rode around in a Hell's Angels jacket with Al D'Amato.” (As U.S. attorney, Giuliani had
gone undercover with New York's junior senator at a drug bust and was photographed looking like a cross between the Wild One and one of the Village People.)

“That's precisely what he's worried about.”

“I'll tell you what. He doesn't have to hold any.”

“No,” said Lategano. “He simply won't do it.”

Miller couldn't believe a strategy that would take guns off the city's streets would be delayed because the mayor was worried about a photo opportunity. “Why don't we have the press conference over here? That way we don't have to transport ten thousand guns to City Hall, and it won't be such a spectacle, but the mayor will have the backdrop and get the front-page picture he wants.”

It was finally resolved to hold the press conference at police headquarters, where we would lay out the weapons, but the mayor didn't have to touch any of them. That was fine with us. Always known for his pointed humor, Miller quipped, “The last guy we want running around headquarters with a gun is Rudy Giuliani.”

I HAD FOUND ELAINE'S THROUGH MAPLE AND MILLER. IT WAS THEIR
hangout. Elaine's is what's known in New York as a “watering hole,” and its clientele is a mix of intellectuals, celebrities, and the press, particularly gossip columnists, as well as New Yorkers who want a good meal and an enjoyable place to talk. Maple the tunnel rat was pleased to be a fixture in such an in spot.

While Maple and Miller seemed to be there every night closing the place, Cheryl and I went once every two or three weeks. Word got out that we were hanging at Elaine's, and it added to our Runyonesque work hard/play hard image, but the reality was far less spectacular than the perception. People may have conjured the image of us all slugging down shots, but I'm not much of a drinker. I might go up for dinner and join the guys for a Diet Coke, but I'd be long gone and they'd continue their plotting and conniving. Maple and Miller knew they might get called to a crime scene at any time, and they tempered themselves, so they wouldn't be going out with half a load on. Maple usually drank cup after cup of double espresso.

One night as I sat with him, Maple was doodling on a napkin, trying to figure out how to stop crime. He decided it came down to four elements:

1. Where are the crimes happening? Put them on a map. What are the times by day of the week, by time of day?
   

2. Here are the crimes, you've got them on a map. Let's coordinate the efforts between detectives and plainclothes and get there fast so we can catch the crooks.
   

3. What are we going to do once we get there? Are we doing decoys? Are we doing buy-and-bust operations? Are we doing warrant enforcement? Quality-of-life enforcement? What works?
   

4. Is it working? The precinct commander is in charge of the plan to reduce crime in his or her area; is that plan being pushed forward? Did they know where the crimes were happening? Were the efforts coordinated? Were the tactics effective? Was crime going down?
   

Maple had captured on his napkin the essence of all our strategies. To control crime we must at all times have:

• Accurate and Timely Intelligence
  

• Rapid Deployment
  

• Effective Tactics
  

• Relentless Follow-up and Assessment.
  

These are the concepts on which the turnaround of New York policing was built, and they bear discussing. I had become a staunch advocate of using private-sector business practices and principles for the management of the NYPD, even using the business term “reengineered” rather than the public policy term “reinventing” government. We further defined these four crime-reduction principles:

Accurate and Timely Intelligence.
If the police are to respond effectively to crime and to criminal events, officers at all levels have to have accurate knowledge of when particular types of crimes are occurring, how and where the crimes are being committed, and who the criminals are. The likelihood of an effective police response to crime increases proportionally as the accuracy of this intelligence increases.

Rapid Deployment of Personnel and Resources.
Once a crime pattern has been identified, an array of personnel and other necessary resources are promptly deployed to deal with it. Although some tactical plans might involve only patrol personnel, for example, experience has proved that the most effective plans require personnel from several units. A viable and comprehensive response to a crime or quality-of-life problem generally
demands that patrol personnel, investigators, and support personnel use their expertise and resources in a coordinated effort.