The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (35 page)

I saw it register. Roache is a smart guy. He understood his situation.

He had to bring the idea to Mayor Ray Flynn. I knew Mayor Flynn's closest adviser, Joe Fisher, and had let him know during the week that I might be available and would be meeting with Roache. Roache and I met with Ray Flynn at the Parkman House several days later. I came prepared with an agenda for addressing the commission's recommendations and reorganizing the department. By this time, I had a practiced game plan.

They made an offer. I would be superintendent-in-chief, a five-star uniformed super chief of the Boston Police. I accepted.

Mayor Flynn wanted to announce my appointment as quickly as possible to stop the bleeding in the department and in the papers, but first I had to go back to New York and inform Alan Kiepper in person. He had brought me to the city, I felt he should hear it from me directly. I did not want to be perceived for any time as a lame duck and have that reflect negatively on the department or myself.

We were going to announce my appointment on a Wednesday. Tuesday evening, we ran another of our subway tours. After these tours, we routinely invited our guests to dinner to discuss what they had seen. At eight o'clock, I broke away to visit Kiepper at his apartment near Columbus Circle. I sat in his living room and told him, “Alan, I'm leaving. It's going to be announced in Boston tomorrow.” He was stunned. I explained my rationale. “Look, certain things were promised to me. They didn't happen. I have had an excellent time working here but, financially, this place is killing me. I recognize that the timing isn't very good, but this opportunity came up very fast, and I feel I have to take it.” I suggested he promote Mike O'Connor to the position of chief to ensure a smooth transition. O'Connor was the man for the job.

Kiepper was understandably shocked and disappointed. They had invested a lot of money in me as their spokesman, and now I was leaving. I was giving him very short notice. All of this was true, but ultimately I believe he understood that I had to go.

Mayor Flynn announced my appointment and the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association immediately went to court to prevent me from returning.
During the Proposition 2½ era, I had become the face of the layoffs and had fought the union over the introduction of one-officer sector cars, and they held a grudge. I was going to have to make many more changes in the department as a result of the St. Clair Commission findings, and they did not want me back. The union felt it had great sway in the department, and my return might change that. I had also left to work for a number of different organizations, an act of disloyalty the union didn't take kindly to.

I have to admit I was surprised at the scale of the union's objections because, only the year before, the New York City Transit Police Benevolent Association had named me man of the year in recognition of my work on their officers’ behalf. The Boston union claimed I had resigned from the Boston Police and could not be reappointed. The suit was expedited, and the city won, but my relationship with the union did not begin well.

I was the number two in the Boston police again, a position I had held ten years before, but this time I was older, wiser, and even better positioned to assume the top role.

But I had outsmarted myself.

The St. Clair Commission report was so damaging that I had thought Mickey could not survive. I believed that after a month or two, he would be eased out, and I would move up. However, Ray Flynn was exceptionally loyal to his childhood friend, and ironically I had given Mickey the political leverage to hold on to his job.

I had to go through Mickey to get new ideas approved. Often, that didn't work out as I planned, and differences of opinion sometimes hindered implementing worthwhile programs. Roache went so far as to erect a wall between his office and mine by sealing off the bathroom corridor.

When I arrived, I found the department was every bit the disaster St. Clair said it was, but I made the commission understand that we were turning the place around. I did the same with the media. I imported John Linder, who had recently left the MTA and formed his own consulting company, and George Kelling to help write a plan of action in response to the St. Clair Report. We got the neighborhood-policing program up and running. Between 1992 and the summer of 1993, using the same techniques that had worked in New York, we began to bring the Boston Police back.

Not long after I left for Boston, Lee Brown announced his resignation as police commissioner. Although he didn't reveal it at the time, his wife was dying of cancer, and he made the understandable choice to return
with her to their home and family in Houston. Ray Kelly, a career NYPD police officer and Brown's first deputy commissioner, was named acting commissioner pending Mayor Dinkins naming a permanent replacement to complete Brown's five-year term.

Over that summer, I interviewed secretly with Mayor Dinkins for the job. The Boston commissionership didn't look like it was anywhere in sight, and the turnaround of the Boston Police was going smoothly. The choice, as I understand it, came down to me or Ray Kelly. I got the call from Mayor Dinkins at seven o'clock one October weekday morning. Normally by seven I'd be on my way to work, but Cheryl and I love cats, and we had just taken in our fifth, an abandoned weeks-old kitten who needed medication and TLC. We were rotating feedings as if it were an infant, and I was bottle-feeding the kitten when the phone rang. I cradled the receiver in my neck, made sure the cat was getting milk, and said hello.

“Bill,” Mayor Dinkins told me, “I wanted to tell you that I've just spoken to Commissioner Kelly and informed him that I'm going to appoint him police commissioner on a permanent basis. I wanted to thank you for participating in the process. I was very impressed with you but I think, at this juncture, the department needs continuity, and Ray, I think, is the man who can provide that and leadership.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I hope it works out well for you. It's very kind of you to call me yourself. All the best.” I was staying in Boston.

In March 1993, Ray Flynn announced that he was giving up the mayoralty to accept the appointment as United States ambassador to the Vatican. Mickey Roache resigned almost immediately as police commissioner and announced he was running for mayor. Commissioners are like that—we all think we can be mayors.

Flynn didn't indicate who was going to be Roache's replacement, but I thought for sure I had the job. After all my plotting and intriguing, a major career goal was within my grasp. I waited for the call for a week, but nothing happened. Then other names started to surface, and I started to get anxious.

At seven o'clock in the morning a few days later, I got a call from Joe Fisher. Could I see the mayor at eight?

I walked into Ray Flynn's beautiful office overlooking Faneuil Hall and found the mayor in shirtsleeves. He and Joe Fisher talked with me about what he had tried to do with the police department. Was this an explanation? An apology? After fifteen minutes, he said, “Bill, I'm going to announce your appointment as police commissioner later this afternoon.”

I'm not an effusive guy, but I wanted to jump in the air. Finally! I shook their hands and settled for a big grin.

Flynn mentioned several friends in the department he asked me to be mindful of, but said, “I understand fully that after I leave you're free to do what you want. With a new mayor coming in, the reality is, for the next five or six months you're going to be on your own.” The acting mayor would be City Council President Tom Menino, who was also running for mayor.

I called Cheryl, my parents, my son, my staff. “I've got it!” Everyone was buzzing. Peter LaPorte, Bob O'Toole, and Kay O'Leary were all in my office when I got back. I can hardly remember the details, everything was an overwhelmingly happy blur.

I was sworn in that afternoon in the fourth-floor conference room at police headquarters, in front of my family and friends and fellow members of the department. Word had gotten out, and the room was overflowing. Roache was there, and the mayor presided. I had contacted former superintendent Bill Taylor, who twenty-two years earlier had predicted that this event would occur, and he was there as well. I signed the ledger that had been signed by every police commissioner before me. My parents were beaming.

I had done it! This kid from Dorchester, who came in as a rookie and didn't know a soul in the department, had gotten to the top. There was a wonderful feeling in the room, a restrained euphoria. To get that badge and finally hold it in my hand: police commissioner. Who would've thunk it?

Finally, the Boston Police were going to get on the national stage and break out. We were going to be the department that my friends and I had dreamed of more than twenty years before.

The commissioner's office itself needed attention, and in order to get what I wanted done, I needed someone to stay on top of the details. I appointed Peter LaPorte chief of staff. LaPorte was a bright, fast up-and-comer, running my office by day, going to law school at night.

I reconfigured the storied sixth-floor administrative offices to make them more open and accessible. No closed choir practices for a few of the chosen soloists, as Joe Jordan had done. No closed-door isolation, as had been Mickey Roache's management style. I wanted a wide-open chorus of believers going in and out of my office.

Upon my return as superintendent-in-chief, one of the first initiatives we had been able to complete was the promotion of thirteen new
captains. No captains had been promoted within the department since 1977. I was influential in ensuring that Al Sweeney was one of these new captains. Sweeney was not one of Roache's choices, and I fully believe his talents would have been overlooked. After a dispute with Roache over several of his actions, Sweeney had been returned to his civil-service rank of lieutenant. Very few of Roache's inner circle had survived. To ensure that the new captains were fully equipped to run the neighborhood-policing plan we were putting in place, we designed and put them through the most comprehensive three-week training session in the history of the department.

Now, as commissioner, I didn't have to spend days or weeks cajoling and working with Roache to get authority to make my moves. I had the opportunity to put the right people in the right places, and I took advantage of it. I immediately promoted Paul Evans to superintendent-in-chief. Paul had not been liked by Mayor Flynn or Commissioner Roache and had been, I believed, unfairly criticized by the St. Clair Commission. I had come to know, respect, and admire Evans and immediately moved him up as my number two. I installed Al Sweeney as commanding officer of the Academy to fully utilize his skills. I brought Jack Maple up from New York as my executive assistant to begin making changes in the detective bureau. I put Jack Gifford in charge of the Operations Division on the seventh floor so I could have him close at hand. Bob O'Toole was always at my side.

Many of my plans were already in the works. In response to the St. Clair Commission, the city council had made two million dollars available to the department and wanted to put fifty more cops on the street. Ask almost any citizen, “Do you want more cops on the street?” and they'll say, “Of course.” Politicians respond to citizens, so this is a popular theme. Under normal circumstances, I would agree. But the St. Clair report had pinpointed significant deficiencies in the technology of the department. We could put all the cops we wanted in the field, but without modern support they would have a hard time making a dent. I argued for systems over cops.

We would be better served, I proposed, with a computerized casemanagement system and photo-imaging, on-line booking, and fingerprinting capabilities that had been designed by deputy superintendent Bill Casey. We needed a planning unit to research and analyze how the department went about solving the problems it faced. Within several years of acquiring the technology, the Boston Police would have the equivalent of
eighty more officers because of the manpower savings the technology would provide. I was able to persuade the commissioner, the mayor, and ultimately the city council, and we won the funding.

Under Roache, I had been able to implement many good programs, including the addition of new technology, the development of the neighborhood-policing program, and the training of neighborhood beat officers. Now, I could stand on the platform we had built in those eighteen months and expedite the goals of those programs by putting my own team into place. During the mayoral campaign, I had an opportunity to move quickly, without the traditional bottleneck at City Hall.

I promoted James Claiborne as the department's first black superintendent, chief of the Bureau of Field Services. He would run all the uniformed operations. To run the day-to-day operations of the detective unit under Superintendent Joe Saia, I appointed Billy Johnson as a deputy superintendent. A maverick and risk taker, Johnson had been running the best investigations in the department as head of the Community Disorders Unit and had become nationally known for his effectiveness in dealing with hate and racial crimes. Once again, I received multiple benefits from one action: Both men were the best people for the jobs, and I very consciously sent the message that this was a new, more progressive generation in the Boston Police, with advancement open to all races and risk takers alike.

To his credit, Acting Mayor Menino didn't try to politically influence the running of the department while he was busy campaigning. As a result, my staff and I were able to deal directly with the office of the new governor, William Weld, and, more important, were able to open lines of communication with the White House, through the good work of Joan Brody, who had been a student of George Kelling at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

President Clinton was pushing hard for a national crime bill. His key was the proposal to hire 100,000 more cops nationwide. As this bill was being hammered out, Brody called the White House with no prior contacts to lobby for federal assistance for some of our efforts. She developed a respected relationship with the White House Domestic Policy Council and the White House staffers working on crime issues, and when the president was preparing to announce the filing of his legislation, which included the Brady gun-control bill, Brody proposed that I stand with him in the Rose Garden, representing American police chiefs. She is the only person I know who went cold-calling at the White House and got in.