Bratton’s Time in California May Offer Clues to His Plans for New York Police

 It was a moment of crisis for the Los Angeles Police Department, and it threatened to derail William J. Bratton’s tenure as its chief. Tens of thousands had gathered for a long-planned immigration rally on May 1, 2007, at a city park. As protesters began to block the street, a police helicopter blasted orders for the crowd to disperse. Moments later, dozens of officers wielded batons and shot 240 rounds of rubber bullets into the crowd.

Mr. Bratton was about to board a plane for a trip to El Salvador, but he turned around to go to the park to try to restore calm. Within days, he called for multiple investigations. By the end of the week, he demoted a deputy chief, who later resigned, and reassigned 60 additional officers for their involvement.

Not long afterward, despite scattered calls for his resignation, Mr. Bratton was named to a second term, the first Los Angeles police chief to receive a reappointment in nearly two decades.

As Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio announced Mr. Bratton’s appointment as the new commissioner of the New York Police Department this week, he cited Mr. Bratton’s time in Los Angeles as a primary reason for his selection, saying it proved he could police fairly while still bringing down crime.

And indeed, his tenure as chief here in the early 2000s may provide hints of what to expect in his renewed role leading the New York force. While in Los Angeles, Mr. Bratton relied on many of the aggressive techniques that have proved divisive in New York, even as he navigated the complicated racial tensions and was seen as an ally by many civil rights leaders.

When he was appointed here in 2002, Mr. Bratton took the reins of a department that was mired in scandal and was seen as openly hostile to black and Latino residents. Just a decade before, deadly riots broke out after the acquittal of police officers who beat Rodney G. King, a black driver who had been pulled over for speeding. A few years later, pervasive misconduct and corruption were uncovered in the Rampart Division, with dozens of officers implicated in allegations involving framing suspects and the use of false evidence, as well as stealing and dealing drugs.

“Bratton ushered in the end of the bad-old-days,” said Connie Rice, a longtime civil rights attorney who spent decades suing the Police Department and became one of Mr. Bratton’s most enthusiastic supporters. “With him came the beginning of the end of the imperial, brutal L.A.P.D. that operated with impunity.”

An outsider who brought the policing tactics he had pioneered in New York, Mr. Bratton was given credit for bringing down the crime rate in Los Angeles for six consecutive years. He helped put more officers on the streets, concentrating them in poor areas and those plagued by gang violence. With Mr. Bratton at the helm, the number of pedestrians stopped by the police significantly increased, with roughly a third of such stops leading to arrests.

At the same time, Mr. Bratton was praised for his persistent courting of local black and Latino leaders, rushing to community meetings to help calm tensions after police shootings and publicly criticizing what he saw as overly aggressive tactics. When he stepped down as chief, the local executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union called his resignation a “terrible loss for the city of Los Angeles.” The editorial page of The Los Angeles Times suggested that he did more to improve race relations here than anyone since Tom Bradley, the only black mayor in the city’s history.

For all the accolades, Mr. Bratton had critics during his seven-year tenure as the leader of one of the largest police departments in the nation. While he helped bring an end to federal oversight and was lauded for improving community relations and bringing racial diversity to the police force, he was criticized for increasing the police presence among the homeless concentrated on Skid Row, and for excessive stops of pedestrians, particularly in poor neighborhoods.

“He gets all this credit for getting a focused goal done, but the real impact of that is really creating a permanent underclass of over-policed people,” said Carol Sobel, a lawyer who has been involved in several lawsuits against the police. “All his efforts on Skid Row going after people for petty things like littering — and there was never evidence that crime dropped there. It just created more problems.”

After the Rampart Division scandal, the Justice Department imposed a consent decree to monitor racial bias, excessive force and corruption in the department. Mr. Bratton was a part of the original team of monitors and later led the effort to convince the court that the department should no longer be under its watch.

To a large extent, Mr. Bratton’s role here was something of a politician. Police union officials and community leaders who clashed with him marveled at his ability to improve public perception of the department continually, even as there was criticism of its tactics.

“Before he arrived, I never had an interaction with the police where they didn’t approach me as if I were a criminal,” said Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the president of Community Coalition, a nonprofit social justice organization based in South Los Angeles. “I don’t think they were stopping people any less, or not targeting boys of color, but there was a basic level of respect once you did get stopped. Not everything was hostile.”

By 2009, nearly 80 percent of registered voters approved of the department, according to a Los Angeles Times poll, which also showed Mr. Bratton had strong backing from black and Latino voters. Blacks, Latinos and women were also enthusiastically recruited to join the force.

As in New York, Mr. Bratton relied heavily on CompStat, a program to track crime and identify problem areas quickly. A similar program traced accusations of corruption and excessive force among officers. Along with Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, he persuaded the City Council to devote more of the budget to the police, eventually attaining a longtime goal of 10,000 officers.

In New York, Mr. Bratton’s clashes with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani were widely known, and Mr. Bratton was pushed out just two years after being appointed. But here, his time was peaceful through two administrations in City Hall. He received nothing but praise from Mr. Villaraigosa, whom Mr. de Blasio consulted.

“He understood you could have effective community and constitutional policing,” Mr. Villaraigosa said. “He was accountable to the mayor and he never ever forgot that.”