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

~ William Bratton (Author), Peter Knobler (Author) "I was only a year and a half old, barely a toddler, and there were a very limited number of places I could be..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, City Hall, Boston Police Department (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When William Bratton was a year and a half old, his mother caught him directing traffic in the street out front of their Boston home. From that moment on, it seemed destined that he would become a cop. In this book, Bratton and his coauthor, Peter Knobler, chronicle Bratton's career, focussing particularly on his efforts to revitalize Boston's and New York City's police departments. Bratton rose quickly through the ranks of the Boston Police Department, where he pioneered community policing and cleaned up the city's subway system. As New York's transit-police chief, he cracked down on minor offenses like turnstile jumping on the theory that the people who commit more serious crimes underground also commit smaller ones. It worked. Finally, Bratton realized his dream of becoming America's top cop: the New York City Police Commissioner. The city's crime rate dropped over 10 percent a year during Bratton's brief tenure as top cop, until Mayor Giuliani's administration forced him out of the job in 1996.

In Turnaround, Bratton describes the police initiatives that led to these successes. Bratton and his peers used computer mapping to pinpoint crime hot spots and then cleaned up the areas using all the tools of law enforcement. One of the favored tools was "quality of life enforcement"--curtailing minor crimes like panhandling, squeegeeing, and prostitution in order to make the streets seem less inviting to worse criminals. Bratton made police commanders from all districts of the city accountable, requiring them to report on progress and problems in their locales, during frequent departmental meetings. Bratton is now a consultant to police departments across the nation, so, like it or not, his style of law enforcement may soon be coming to a city near you. This is not a page-turner or a masterful work of literature, but Bratton's ideas about curbing crime should be of interest to both those involved in law enforcement and regular people who are concerned about crime. --Jill Marquis

From Library Journal

More than the story of Bratton's two years as New York City police chief and his disagreements with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, this work details Bratton's early life and tenure at previous policing jobs while providing a crash review of contemporary American policing. For every citizen who has wondered, "What do these cops think they're doing?" this book is the answer. Bratton's book resembles Los Angeles Police Chief William Williams's Taking Back Our Streets (LJ 4/1/96), but it covers more. The management reengineering that Bratton undertook in all of his command positions earned him the sobriquet CEO Cop and allowed him to step right into private industry when he resigned. Bratton may or may not be responsible for New York's plummeting crime rate, but he put impetus behind a new era of community and quality-of-life policing as espoused by George Kelling and Catherine M. Coles in Fixing Broken Windows (LJ 12/96). This book is certain to be widely read and may be Bratton's lasting contribution. [Preivewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/97.]?Janice Dunham, John Jay Coll. of Criminal Justice Lib., New Yor.
-?Janice Dunham, John Jay Coll. of Criminal Justice Lib., New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 329 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (January 20, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679452516
• ISBN-13: 978-0679452515
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #170,471 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm a believer, February 2, 2003

By	Andrew Everett (Santa Monica, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I decided to read this book when Bill Bratton
was hired as Chief of Police in Los Angeles.

This book reads like an autobiography, from Bratton's
childhood in Boston, until after his falling out with
Guiliani. Through his experiences, I learned a lot
about police work.

Critics say that Bratton's success in New York was
concurrent with a nationwide drop in crime (presumably
due to a strong economy) and thus isn't such a big deal.
Cheap shot. This book explains how a well managed
police effort absolutely has an effect on crime.

Bratton has a strong track record of accomplishment,
turning around the MBTA Police (Massachusetts Bay Transit
Authority), the Metropolitan Police (now part of the
Massachusetts State Police), the New York Transit
Police, Boston Police, and NYPD.

Bratton believes in the Broken Windows theory, i.e.
that acceptance of petty crime creates an environment
that breeds more serious crime. (The slippery slope
argument.) He also believes in analysis of crime
statistics, by location/time/etc. to determine how
to deploy police resources: originally pins on
a map, eventually growing in to the famous CompStat.

Having lived in the Boston area for many years, the
references to different parts of the city where he
worked, and to various people (Mayors, police officials,
etc.) made the book all the more interesting for me.
Also, Bratton talks about a book called Your Police
which he checked out of the library as a boy; I remember
checking that same book out of the library when I was
around 8-years old. (Although I've always had a strong
interest in it, I didn't pursue a career in law enforcement.).

Bratton certainly has his work cut out for
him in Los Angeles. The LAPD has been plagued by
scandal, inept leadership, and (not surprisingly)
low morale and high employee turnover. And crime
is pervasive -- from reckless driving, littering
and graffiti, to gang drive-by shootings.

After reading this book, I am convinced that
Bratton is exactly what L.A. needs.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Paradigm in Police Leadership, November 24, 2004

By	David M. Heaukulani (Hilo, HI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have been teaching college level police management courses since 1976. I began to cite Bratton's tactics and leadership style in my lectures after he appeared in TIME and predicted that his name will be in police text books in the near future along with other heavyweights. Sure enough, in John Dempsey's "Introduction To Policing" (second edition) Bratton's COMPSTAT efforts are cited on pages 24-25. What is surprising to me are the negative reviews posted on this Amazon review section. They apparently have no clue on the nature of social disorder fostered in the "Broken Window" syndrome embraced by Bratton and integrated into his crime-specific targeting tactics of COMPSTAT. And yes crime did decrease in the nation during that period but that had nothing to do with targeting the notorious "window wipers" and recently paroled ex-cons (read the book to learn about these police tactics). I wonder if the negative reviewers are part of the traditional set that resisted needed change in how police do business? But I respect Bratton for his leadership style. Talk to New York transit cops who got new radios, Glocks and black leather jackets. Those little things mean a lot to street cops and that's what bonds them to their leaders. And, after being on the job only for a few weeks, he goes into the NYPD precinct to personally supervise the arrest of the cocaine cops then faced the cameras holding up the badges telling the city that the badge numbers will never be used again forever. It is a leadership paradigm that others wish they had thought of first. Of course, his detractors will call it grandstanding. If they know so much, how come they never got to be top cop of Boston, NYPD or LAPD?

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting on many levels, July 8, 2002

By	Small Beer (Boise, Idao) - See all my reviews

I found this book to be interesting on many levels. The book is interesting, first, as an autobiography of one of the most important police commissioners of the twentieth century. Bratton has an interesting story to tell, and he is a good storyteller. He recounts what his childhood was like growing up in the Boston suburbs, and how he rose from humble beginnings to become the most important police officer in the United States. This part of the book is inspirational, and is very much in the self-improvement tradition of American autobiography (think Benjamin Franklin, Malcolm X, etc.).

This book is interesting, further, because Bratton explains the type of power politics that are played in police departments. This part of the book really surprised me. I thought that Bratton would keep mum about all the negative things that occur at police headquarters. But, instead, he details the infighting that often happens between the old guard and the new guard. As Bratton explains it, members of the old guard do not take well to newer officers who are advancing quickly, and try to thwart their progress. The ways in which they do this are Machiavellian and are, accordingly, fun to read about. Bratton does not pull any punches in describing the run-ins he had with members of the old guard at the Boston police department, as well as his famous battles with Rudolph Giuliani, while Bratton was head of the NYPD. Readers will be astonished and disconcerted by the type of hardball officers and government officials play, so that these power-seekers can receive credit for initiatives that might not even have stemmed from their own ideas.

This book is interesting, too, from a philosophical perspective. Bratton was the first major police commissioner to put the "broken windows" policing philosophy into practice. The broken windows philosophy, in short, says that ignoring petty crime provides an atmosphere that is conducive to all types of crime. For instance, if a criminal sees a street that has broken windows, then the criminal may believe that it is open season for committing crime on that street. Bratton found that, by reducing the amount of city-wide petty crime, he was also able to reduce the number of city-wide serious crime. It is interesting to read about this theory of policing, which originated in an essay written by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, and how the theory works in practice.

This book is interesting, lastly, from a management perspective. I would recommend this book to students in business school, or to anyone who is responsible for overseeing large groups of people. Bratton gives many insights into how to interact well with the press, how to keep employees happy and how to sell a program. It is not clear whether Bratton intended his book to be read from this angle, but I think that his book contains many remarkable pearls of wisdom on how to run and operate a large organization.

All-and-all, this is a wonderful book and it should appeal to many different types of people. Police officers, Bostonians, New Yorkers, managers of businesses and citizens interested in learning more about policing and crime should all find something to enjoy in this book.