As the Justice Department official who was responsible for implementing the 1994 federal crime law, I had a ringside view of changes in U. S. policing in the 1990s. I came to one clear conclusion: The single-most important factor in determining whether cities made real progress in reducing violent crime was the quality of police leadership.
Three cities were the poster children for crime reduction in the ’90s. New York City went from 2,200 homicides in the early ’90s to 650 by 2000; last year, it had 433. San Diego went from almost 170 homicides to 54 by the end of decade; it had 51 last year. Boston went from 150 to 40; it had 41 last year. An independent assessment of police department effectiveness based on crime rates and other factors in recent decades put the police in those three cities at the top of the list.
Not coincidentally all three of those cities had exceptional police leaders. William Bratton in New York City brought to the job a relentless focus on reducing crime and a management structure designed to motivate and hold district commanders accountable for progress toward that objective. San Diego police Chief Jerry Sanders was called the father of community policing in America and was a pioneer in training officers on how to engage effectively with communities; he was later elected mayor of San Diego. Police Commissioner Paul Evans in Boston developed close working relationships with key institutions in neighborhoods, including churches; when he stepped down after almost a decade, the British Home Office hired him to come to England to assess and improve performance of local police forces.
