THE POLICE COMMISSIONER

Early Test For Bloomberg: Shaping Police Strategy

After months of tailoring himself as the seamless heir to the Giuliani era,
Michael R. Bloomberg faces his first big decision, one that is likely to be
shaped, in large part, by a man who came to prominence under Mayor David N.
Dinkins.

Yesterday, Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik announced that he would
leave his position on Jan. 1. While no announcement has been made on a
successor, the name mentioned most frequently is that of Mr. Bloomberg's
principal adviser on criminal justice matters, Raymond W. Kelly.

Mr. Kelly served as commissioner in 1992 and 1993 under Mayor Dinkins, as
crime began to decline after a particularly bloody period in the city's
history. Mr. Kelly, who worked from 1994 to 2000 in a number of senior
federal law enforcement posts, is now the head of security for Bear Stearns.

Mr. Kelly would not be drawn out yesterday on the question of whether he
expected to be asked to serve as police commissioner, or was interested. He
described Mr. Bloomberg's approach to criminal justice as "Giuliani Plus"
- -- blending the current mayor's successes in sharply reducing crime with
improved technologies and better community relations. "Things have
significantly changed for the better," Mr. Kelly said, "and Mike does not
want to go back to the way things were in the past. The pro-active,
aggressive policing will continue. At the same time, the Police Department
needs better relations with the people it serves." Under Mayor Rudolph W.
Giuliani, the Police Department has had difficult relations with blacks.

Mr. Bloomberg has said that he will continue to insist on accountability at
the precinct level for crime and quality of life issues, a significant
overhaul of the department that was instituted through the Giuliani
administration's Compstat program. The successes of the approach, Mr. Kelly
said, are undeniable.

"Who couldn't like it?" he asked.

In 1990, on behalf of Mayor Dinkins, Mr. Kelly developed the Safe Streets,
Safe City proposal that resulted in a major expansion of the police force.
He also championed a program in which police officers would play multiple
roles as problem solvers in a neighborhood, a concept called community
policing. During his tenure, murders and overall crime began the drop that
has continued.

When Mr. Giuliani took office, he promptly declared community policing to
be a failure. It became an all-purpose emblem of a past that did not work.
Since then, various forms of the idea have been championed by some of the
people who first led the Police Department under Mr. Giuliani, including
his first police commissioner, William J. Bratton, who had a bitter split
with the mayor in 1995. Mr. Bratton said that the original notion needed to
be adjusted, not discarded, particularly after the major reductions in crime.

Mr. Kelly was not about to reopen the debate over the merits of an idea
proposed at the height of an epidemic of crack murders, at a time of
revelations of broad misconduct in the department. The Bloomberg approach,
he said, "is not a community policing philosophy, it's a community
involvement approach."

What that means in practical terms, he said, is that the new administration
will continue to be aggressive on crime and aggressive in making contact
with institutions and people outside the department. "Mike has said, you
need more community outreach, and you need pro-active policing," Mr. Kelly
said.

When he was commissioner, Mr. Kelly spent many Sundays visiting
predominantly African-American churches to ask for support and to recruit
candidates.

But the Giuliani administration's relationship with blacks was often
strained. Particularly after the police shootings of two unarmed black men,
Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond, many voices were raised to say that
for all its successes, the Police Department was driven too much by numbers
and not enough by a sense of community service. After Mr. Kerik took office
nearly 15 months ago, he made outreach an important part of his mission.

If the signature event of the Giuliani period has been the reduction in
crime, public fears have moved into new dimensions since Sept. 11.

When Mr. Giuliani was first elected, the city had just escaped the clutches
of a period in which more than 2,000 people a year were murdered. Mr.
Bloomberg's mayoralty begins in an era when thousands of people were
murdered in a matter of minutes. While no Police Department can stop
attacks on skyscrapers by hijacked airplanes, the mere presence of officers
on the street can be a calming force.

That may not be a simple goal to achieve. Because of laws that require
automatic promotion to the rank of detective after officers have served in
special squads, the department now has 3,000 more detectives than it needs,
said John Timoney, the former first deputy commissioner in New York and the
commissioner of the Philadelphia police. Another 500 detectives are due for
promotion in March, he said.

"If Ray Kelly becomes commissioner, he may find that he has less cops to
put on patrol now than he did nine years ago," Mr. Timoney said.

Mr. Kelly would only say that the next commissioner would face "very tough
management choices, due to the fiscal problems."

Not all the Giuliani administration programs are likely to survive. The
terror attack forced the city to drop Operation Condor, a cornerstone of
its policing efforts over the past two years that paid officers overtime to
work a sixth day to concentrate on street-level drug arrests.

Although critics said the program did little beyond spending enormous
amounts of money on very low level criminals, Mr. Giuliani has repeatedly
argued that it was central to reduction of major crime. Even with the
suspension of the program, crime has continued to descend.

Mr. Bloomberg is not invested in any particular police philosophy that has
not proven its worth, Mr. Kelly said. "There certainly have been a lot of
lessons learned," he said. "I give a lot of credit to the Giuliani
administration."