Abstract
New Yorkers are now safer in the city than they have been in years. Yet tensions between police officers and the communities in which they work have continued to mount in New York, as in other cities across the country. Just this past summer, racial violence erupted in Milwaukee and Baton Rouge in response to the fatal shooting of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. Milwaukee joined other cities like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., in which police killings have been seen as brutal evidence of the disrespect that many African Americans say the police show them. The challenge facing the NYPD today is to maintain safe streets while ushering in a new era of mutual respect between officers and local communities. At this early stage of digital technology adoption, the NYPD’s attempt under Commr. William Bratton (2014-2016) to change the culture of policing by enriching communications between police and neighborhoods holds lessons for public agencies across the U.S. during a period of intense volatility. This white paper explores NYPD’s adoption of Twitter and an ideation platform called IdeaScale that was aimed at allowing community members to nominate “quality of life” issues for resolution by the police. It examines the department's pivot to Facebook as an interactive communications platform following its experience with IdeaScale. It connects these initiatives to the NYPD’s overall push for Neighborhood Coordination Officers throughout the city. Finally, it pulls together information about NYPD’s revisions to its training and recruitment programs and the department’s ongoing efforts to upgrade its basic digital assets, from precinct Internet access to smartphones. These programs, all made possible by Commr. Bratton’s strong leadership, were designed to create a virtuous cycle: The NYPD’s social media, neighborhood policing, and new recruiting and training programs aimed to increase mutual respect by helping officers understand and enhance their responsibility to serve and protect New York City communities — and help community members see police officers as human beings. Stronger community relations may, in turn, support crime prevention. Shifting from a confrontational to a collaborative approach may encourage community members to come forward when they learn about crime. And all of these steps are designed to lead policing away from an exclusive focus on crime reduction and towards a balanced strategy of crime prevention and community outreach — an effort, in Commr. Bratton’s words, to move from a “warrior” to a “guardian” policing mindset.
Highlights
During the second term of New York Police Department Commissioner William Bratton (2014-2016), a significant shift in the culture of the department took place, aimed at changing policing nationwide
It was part of a constellation of initiatives aimed at transforming policing in New York City at a critical moment in the city's history
Bratton delegated accountability and responsibility to NYPD personnel in a way that is, according to Deputy Inspector Lenz, "Really 180 degrees from the type of management style that we worked under [before]." Inspector Lenz continues: "If Commissioner Bratton had come in and looked at how Commissioner Kelly ran the 14th floor of the Police Department and said, 'Wow, that’s awesome,' and he had just continued doing it, everybody that was under Kelly would just have continued with the status quo
Summary
Over his term, using this leverage, Commr Bratton implemented projects both on the street and online aimed at encouraging officers to engage with community members, listen to their concerns, and pursue policing as a partnership between communities and precincts. Bratton delegated accountability and responsibility to NYPD personnel in a way that is, according to Deputy Inspector Lenz, "Really 180 degrees from the type of management style that we worked under [before]." Inspector Lenz continues: "If Commissioner Bratton had come in and looked at how Commissioner Kelly ran the 14th floor of the Police Department and said, 'Wow, that’s awesome,' and he had just continued doing it, everybody that was under Kelly would just have continued with the status quo He changed, he turned that on its head and basically created a whole new management philosophy in terms of how decisions are made. Before exploring details of the Twitter, IdeaScale, and Facebook programs, the following section sketches key elements of the context within which those programs were launched: the Neighborhood Coordinating Officer pilot program and revised training regimes
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