Commissioner Bratton on Gun Violence in NYC

William J. Bratton, former NYPD police commissioner, talks about gun violence in New York City and nationwide. 

Here's a transcript of the interview:

[MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BRIAN LEHRER: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and with us now former New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton, who's been talking this week, among other things, about the 'do nothing Congress,' as he put it, when it comes to gun safety legislation. He even on, Ari Melber's show on MSNBC the other day, used the new derisive nickname 'Massacre Mitch' for Mitch McConnell. And said, 'it goes with the majority leader's other recent nickname for bottling up in election security bill, 'Moscow Mitch.' So, we'll talk about white supremacists’ mass shootings on the rise and what to do with them. But also, this year's 5 percent increase in shootings in New York City, mostly gang related, as we've covered the last two days with community activists Brian Cunningham and Jamil Jivani. So, Commissioner, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC. 

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: It's a pleasure to be with you once again.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: And you said, on MSNBC, that you were happy to see the governor of Texas shouted down by protesters in an appearance earlier this week. You said we need more shouting down like that. And I was surprised to hear you, as a former government official and law enforcement official, to call for that.  Would you elaborate on why?

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: Yes. Uh, we have been advocating, I think the American public, American law enforcement, for legislative response to the growing gun crises in this country–as reflected in the increase in mass murders. And it's been falling on largely deaf ears in the controlling body of the U. S. Congress, mainly the Senate. And in particular, the majority leader of the Senate. And, um, I don't quite understand when 80 to 90 percent of Americans of all parties are supportive of the idea of identification, verification before purchases of firearms, why that can't be done. And to me, it seems like it's being blocked by one individual. And so those that would be supportive of that position, including the governor of Texas and others that, uh, American voters effectively need to not only shout them down, but vote them out if they're not reflective of their will. And it's very frustrating to, uh, be in this vicious cycle-we have the murders, we have the shootings, we have the tears, we have the platitudes, um, and nothing changes.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: And—

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: And, uh, I feel somewhat like the—the--the lead actor in the network movie and the network play now playing on Broadway, Yelling Out the Window. He's fed up and he's not going to take it anymore.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. And--and “Massacre Mitch,” I mean, as language becomes so harsh and sometimes, frankly, violence flows from it, does McConnell deserve that intense and nick name associated with mass murder?

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: That, uh, nickname was applied to him, and I'm not sure what the source of it was and followed the, uh, nickname that Morning Joe tagged him with on his continuing reluctance to authorize more activity to prevent election fraud in the upcoming election, the idea of Moscow Mitch. He seemed to react quite actively to that. So it got under his skin. So whoever the author of the ‘Massacre Mitch,’ was in terms of his reluctance, historic reluctance to do anything about gun control, was, I think, an effort on the part of the author of that phrase to get under his skin and maybe get some positive reaction. Whether that will happen or not, I would not hold my breath. I think the only way, uh, its’ trying to change is if the voters of his state, and I understand that he may not be particularly popular in his state at this moment for a variety of reasons, including the opioid crises, that, uh, he might be responsive. But it might require an election to make the changes. And the reality is, despite all the ri--rhetoric and, the rhetoric in America has, unfortunately got into a level, uh, the terminology, the language used is unlike anything we’ve seeing going back to earlier times in our history, that this is not new in American history, political history, language, etc. But I think in contemporary times it is, and it's unfortunate, but it's what's necessary in the state of social media and to, uh, to attract attention, to focus attention on some of these issues.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: My guest is former New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton. 212-433-WNYC as always. 212-433-9692. All that seems to be moving forward, for now, is a bill for what they call, ‘red flag laws.’ What's your understanding, as former police commissioner, of red flag laws, and if they're useful as a tool in public safety?

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: They would be useful largely for issues of suicide and the reality of gun violence, overall, is that suicides account, still, for the majority of victims, uh, relative to deaths by, um, firearms. I think Senator Schumer, little blurb I saw on his comments on it yesterday, he really felt it was not enough to, uh, really deal with the crises at hand and that the red flag was, in fact, a red herring. The idea of, ‘let's deflect attention from what really needs to be done’–universal identification for people seeking to buy guns, shutting down a lot of these gun shows. The real things that would have impact--red flag might be helpful and evidently some evidence that it's been helpful in the issue of suicide by firearms, but overall, will have impact on the issue that's on the front pages and leading the news of the moment? Probably not.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Let me play for you, two clips of President Trump yesterday on gun legislation and get your reactions. In his TelePrompTer speech on Monday, he did not mention background checks, but he did say this yesterday before leaving for Dayton and El Paso.

 

[CLIP]

 

PRES. DONALD J. TRUMP: I think both Republicans and Democrats are getting close to a bill on, to doing something on background checks. [END CLIP]

 

BRIAN LEHRER: He said, for those of you couldn't hear above the noise, he thinks both Democrats and Republicans are getting close to doing something on a bill on background checks. Do you think he's serious about doing something, now that he said that?

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: I--I, for one, am not going to hold my breath. It's nice to hear from the President of the United States, at least, uh, it sounds like he supportive of it. It, uh, well, the proof will be in the pudding. If the bill ends up on his desk, which is unlikely, and he signs it, wonderful. But, uh, there's a lot of bridges to be crossed before that would happen. And unfortunately, I think a lot of bridges, like the infrastructure of United States, would probably collapse before that bill would get successfully across.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: And The Washington Post is reporting that NRA leader Wayne LaPierre called the president and asked him to back off the background checks thing. That seemed to work for the NRA after an earlier mass shooting, which, I'm sure you remember, where Trump said he was for background checks and then dropped it. Do you think the NRA's influence is as strong today?

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: I do as well as, uh, Fox News and some of the other, uh, right-wing pundits that seem to have such great influence--

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Well to that, to that point, you know, the cover of The New York Post, for several days this week has had, uh, ban assault weapons editorial on the front page. And then, of course, as a Murdoch paper, same guy who owns Fox, I don’t know if Fox itself is getting on that bandwagon, but do you think that's influential at all?

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: Well, that's a separate issue that, uh, which is problematic in the sense of the assault weapons ban, which we had for 10 years, uh, uh, back in the nineties, uh, uh had actually very little impact on violence in America but it was a symbolic step. Bringing it back up again, since we have 15 million of these weapons already legally in the hands of Americans, and they'll be no effort to take them out of their hands, nor should there be, an assault weapons ban would be great, but it would be a Band-aid on, uh, what is a mortal wound, if you will. So there you have the example of The Post is advocating, apparently, assault weapons ban. I don't know where they are on the universal background check. Universal background check would be, I think, the most critical and most doable first step since, I think, --

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Mmhm

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: --the recent polling shows 80 to 90 percent of Americans understand the wisdom of it. It's not a panacea, but it would be a significant big first step.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: That's interesting that you think the background check bill would be more consequential. I guess, I might have thought the opposite because both the Dayton shooter and the El Paso shooter, as I understand it, would have passed the background checks, uh, as they exist, to buy their legal weapons. Whereas, if you couldn't get an assault weapon that could kill, you know, nine people and wound 20 something in 32 seconds, as has happened in Dayton, well, then it couldn't happen.

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: Well, again to every regulation that you would put in, there would be loop holes, exceptions, go-rounds. And the idea here is there is no panacea in a country that has more guns than it has people, in a country that now as 14 or 15 million assault weapons. But the idea is to prevent as many of them as you can. I think the one that would have the most impact, in terms of its prevention potential, this is my opinion, would be the universal background check. The assault weapons banned is, uh, psychologically, sounds great. I was certainly in supportive of. I was certainly one of the lead advocates of, and still am, of the 94 crime bill, uh, that 10 years sunsetted previous provision. The studies that were done showed that it basically did not significantly reduce the number of incidents involved that type of weapon during that 10-year period. Uh, there are only something like 300 actual incidents involving that weapon, and they did not decline dramatically in my city of New York.  Currently, uh, that type of weapon is almost never used in the shootings that the city experiences. Other the cities, Atlanta, Los Angeles and others, have had a more significant problem with that weapon. But that weapon is not a particular problem in New York City, for example.

 

BRIAN: Dana in Queens, you’re on WNYC with former Police Commissioner William Bratton. Hi, Dana.

 

DANA: Hi. I think we're all on the same page. Um, the fact is that it takes a woman.  New Zealand had a woman premier who pushed through the most effective gun control laws I've ever heard of, where there was a recall as well as a completely reconfiguring the laws in order to have a gun.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Yeah after the recent Christchurch white supremacist shooting.

 

DANA: Exactly. And it was a PR victory as much as it was a law victory. She shamed the entire nation into doing it. It takes a woman. I think we should organize women and children, shame the Republicans. I think maybe even Mitch McConnell's front door, go there with children. I don't know what it takes, but it has to be a PR victory because right now we're on bottom.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Who are you for for president Dana?

 

DANA: I'm a Warren and Biden person.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Thank you very much. Um, commissioner, she mentions the recall, which is obviously another step that I'm sure would meet with fierce resistance in this country, for assault weapons in New Zealand, what do you think about the viability of some version of that?

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: Don’t even waste time with it. It’s never going to happen. That none of those countries had anywhere near the ingrained gun culture we have. We have, uh, uh, hunting culture going back to our very beginnings, which involved millions of Americans, which is used to legitimize a lot of the NRA positions. But the reality is, we have a fascination with guns in this country that exceeds any other place in the world. And so whether it was Great Britain in their efforts to reduce firearms, and they were very successful at it, although they are dealing with knife crimes now, or one of the Scandinavian countries, which pretty much did away with them totally. They’re different cultures, different societies. So I would not, uh, throw red meat at the, the NRA and the Republican right-wing on this issue because their biggest argument is they're coming to take your guns. Let’s--it's not going to happen. Don't even bother talking about it. Let's try to focus on things that can happen. I'm an optimist on most issues. I was an optimist that something could be done about crime in the nineties, and we did something about it so that New York City, 30 years later, has 80% less crime than we had back then. America has 50% less violent crime that we had back in the nineties. We didn't solve it all. Similarly, on this gun issue, we're not going to solve it all. But we can, in fact, take meaningful steps. Background checks is one of those. Assault weapons ban unlikely to happen but it would be a psychological--symbolic victory. Better support for the ATF. Better support for the Center on, uh, uh disease control that, with over the years, Congress has cut, cut, cut funding for those two essential entities that deal with gun violence, The ATF and the Center on Disease Control. The research that, uh, so--and this is a bipartisan fault in this issue, being, quite frankly. A lot of the focus is on the Republican side of the House but the reality is this is an issue that there is blame enough to go around on both sides of the sense of some of the things that have gone on here. But now, as the idea to try and find some common ground that everyone can could get on, and, uh, that common ground, unfortunately, is going to be a relatively small piece of geography. And that's the concern I have about the idea of talking about seizing weaponry--

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Mmhm.

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: --that, that's, uh, that's a bridge too far, to use that expression.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: You're saying it gives the NRA reinforcement for their primary talking point. The slippery slope—to confiscation

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: Exactly, exactly. It’s red meat, it’s red meat.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Let me turn to gun violence here in New York City. It is up 5% this year, but still way down compared to five years ago–way, way down compared to 25 years ago. Are you watching the city closely enough these days to have an opinion on what's happening?

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: I certainly do. That 5.2% is actually 22 incidents. Twenty-two incidents in a city of eight and a half million people. In 1990, this city had 2,245 murders. It had 5,000 people shot on the streets of New York. In 2019, the city will have fewer than 1,000 shooting incidents in the city, maybe as low as 900 a city of eight and one half million people. So let's get real about this, this idea of a play up 5% increase. The full story is that the actual incidents in July of 2019 decreased by 2.2% from July of last year. The numbers are so low now that even small increases, which will be temporary, looked larger because they always throw the percentage out. The reality of New York City, this year, this city, under the leadership of Commissioner O’Neill, Mayor de Blasio, who gets beat up a lot but on the on the issue of crime, he can take, uh, basically credit along with his predecessors, on a phenomenal reduction in violent crime in this city–leading the nation for that matter, I'm not concerned about crime in the city as I am about disorder. And the linkage I make between crime and disorder, you have to focus on both, and what it's starting to happen in this city, and indeed in America, even as crime stays down 50% from what it was in the violence of the nineties, some cities--Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and others--still having significant crime numbers, shooting numbers, that it is still down dramatically from the nineties. But every city in America is starting to see very significant increase in disorder on the streets. Disorder that is largely associate with, unfortunately the term “homeless” but is really around the issue of service resistant individuals. So even if there were accommodations for all of them, because the emotional illness, the drug addictions have alcoholic addiction, uh, psychological issues, would not take advantage of it. And we have a growing crisis in that particular, uh, with that particular problem. And why is that problematic? Because that's what people see every day. Even in the height of the crime epidemic in New York City in 1990 with seven and a half million residents, seven million of them were not the victims of a serious crime. But all seven and half million, every day, saw the deterioration of the city in the 70s and 80s. And every day in this city, and I travel all over the country, Chicago, Washington, San Francisco, the epicenter, uh, of this issue, what is going on in the streets should be a growing concern. How do we deal with the emotional ill? How do we deal with the continuing opioid crises? We can't be shutting down mental, uh, beds for the mentally ill and reducing efforts and dealing with drug addiction, and at the same time, expect that we're going to be able to make Americans feel safe.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: On the-- go ahead, I'm sorry.

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: It is basically, uh uh, the expression, “those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” Having amount of 50 years. I was here during the 70s and 80s and Boston, New York, when it got is disastrous as it was for the highest crime in our history in 1990. I was here for the successes and some of the failures of the 90s that we’re still feeling ramifications of today. The so called “mass incarceration” issue. But the reality is America is much safer than it was in terms of overall violent crime. But we're still dealing with this new fear of mass shootings. We’re still dealing with the fear of international terrorism, as well as domestic terrorism. And, uh, a new fear that is growing that echoes the 70s and 80s, the disorder that were increasingly seeing on our streets that the government, the police, seems powerless to interfere with.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: On disorder, um, do you now--and mass incarceration, since you brought them up in the same breath, do you now think broken windows policing, your term that Mayor de Blasio uses to this day--

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: And he should

 

BRIAN LEHRER: --as having had unintended side effects, too much collateral damage on people's lives from them getting criminal records, arresting--

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: Let me, let me put it this way, in medical terms, because most people understand medical terms maybe more than they do criminal justice terms. Uh, in the 1990s, this city, this country, were afflicted with a horrific cancer. And when you go to a doctor and he finds that you have a serious malignancy, he's going to use a variety of medicines on you, all of which have the potential to cause you harm if they are overused. Whether it is chemo, whether it’s radiation, whether it’s with surgery. The good news, over the last 30 years, medicine and criminal justice have learned how to better, more precisely treat the illness of cancer, in its many forms, and the illness of crime and disorder in their many forms. Were mistakes made along the way? Too much chemo? Too much radiation that's going to make you sicker? New York City is a prime example of too much stop, question, frisk, an unintended consequence of trying to apply a medicine that seemed to work, initially, for the very serious cancer. But as the city got better, as it got healthier, it needed less of that chemo, less of that radiation. Unfortunately, previous administration kept increasing it, thinking that was what was making the patient better. It was not. It was actually making the patients sicker. Fortunately, in 2010, previous commissioner, previous mayor, understood that they were applying too much, began to lessen. Mayor de Blasio, running for office, clearly understood that despite that reduction in that particular medicine, stop, question and frisk, that it was having significant consequences–particularly minority community-and vowed that he would cut it back even further, feeling as I did, and that's why I was appointed as his police commissioner, we could apply much less medicine and the patient would still get better. And what has happened? Stop, questions and frisk this year will be in about 10,000. This will be the safest crime year in the history of New York City. That the issue is the disorder aspect, crime and disorder, we’re starting to see, not just in New York but around the country, a growth in that illness once again. Learning from the lessons of the past, how can we begin to address this growing issue around disorder and not have the same unintended consequence we have the last time? Medicine and criminal justice policing are constantly evolving, constantly learning. Did too many people go to jail in the nineties? Certainly. At the same time, we are losing sight of the fact that a lot of who people went to jail, needed to go to jail. Case in point, 10% of the current prison population is in federal prisons, 90% of in state prisons and jails. Of that 90% state prisons and jails, 75% of the violent crime. Now, do you want those people wandering the streets of your city? What--what--what do you think helped to reduce the plague of violence? The cancer of violence in the nineties? We put a lot of people in jail–some of whom would have been better off with treatment that was not available. We put them in a 30 day programs. We clearly understand, to deal adequately with drug issues, you need years long programs, not 30 days. Nobody's going to be cured in 30 days. So the good news is, as we go forward, we have learned from the mistakes of the past. But in this debate about the 94 crime bill, what did they think that cured the cancer? It was the idea of putting a lot of people in jail who were killing people. Two thousand two hundred and forty-five murders in New York. That meant that with 2,245 people that kill them. Five hundred thousand people shot in the streets in New York. Five hundred thousand people who shot them. This year, in this city, we have controlled the disease, we understand better that we may have over applied some of the medicine. So as we go forward, we're learning. But this idea of criticizing, unless you were here in the nineties, don't criticize because it was awful here in this city.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: So—

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: I was here, and I understand it.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: So then on, going forward and not applying to much of the medicine, to use that analogy, um, today, I mean, we see DAs and others, you know, not wanting to, um, make some of the disorder arrests that were made in the past–marijuana, um, fare evasion, looseys. And I wonder if you think that that is a risk.

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: That is something that we will be able to experiment with because, clearly, Mayor de Blasio, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, now Police Commissioner O'Neill, have been willing to, effectively, apply much less medicine. Summonses are down. Criminal, uh, arrest are down for a lot of these minor offenses. I'm still not supportive of a lot of the issues around marijuana. I think in years ahead we're going to find that was a mistake–the legalization of that. I support it from medical purposes but not for general use. And I think 20 years from now, we're going to regret that, much the same as with the vaping that's replacing cigarette smoking is starting to prove problematic. But putting the marijuana issue aside and the fare evasion issues. The fare evasion issue is now costing the subway system something on the order of $250 million a year. And if it is continuing to increase, which seems to be the issue because the enforcement that is being applied is not effective. It's like you going to the doctor and saying to the doctor, ‘Doctor, I'm not getting better. Uh, what can you do?’ ‘Well, I may have to increase your medicine.’ So, might there be a need going forward to gradually increase the medicine, in other words, potential penalties if they reduced penalties not working? We'll see. But you have to credit this administration, this Police Department, with efforts to deal with the unintended, unanticipated consequences of some of the activities of the 90s. And we're attempting to do that. But we are also seeing, at the same time, that that pullback is in fact creating a lot more disorder. And at some point, in time that disorder is going to become so apparent, I believe that people are going to say, ‘How can we address this?’ And once again, we're going to have to debate, ‘Do we, for certain types of offenses, have to increase the doses of medicine?’ And the good news is we have an ability, we now call it ‘decision policing.’ It's like doctors. Doctors now have CAT scans. They have all these abilities to not have to destroy a lot of healthy cells while dealing with the ill sells. Similarly, in policing, we now have, we have comp stats, so we know much more, much more intelligence on who actually is committing the crime in the city. And the city of New York, eight and a half million people, there is about 5,000 hardened criminals in the city, repeat offenders, who commit a significant amount of the violent crime that were reporting out–the gangs, for example. So instead of stopping back in 2010, 700 thousand young black and brown men, this year 10,000 were stopped. Crime continued to go down. And more of those being stopped, the percentages of those carrying firearms, the percentage of those, uh, that were actually engaged in inappropriate action has increased dramatically from when the 700 thousand. So with precision medicine, as we're attempting to apply it, we're getting better results without impacting negatively on, in the case of a cancer who had healthy cells. In the case of New York, who had good, healthy, young, black and brown men.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: We just have one-minute left, and maybe this is too big a question for one minute. But why is violent crime--

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: Happy to come back.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Ha-ha. Happy to have you. But why is violent crime remaining so low in New York, while it's going way up in places like Chicago and Baltimore.

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: Chicago and Baltimore are dealing with an even more significant problem, cancer, than New York.  New York got its arms around the problems a lot earlier in the early 90s and kept its arms around that problem. Both Chicago and Baltimore, Detroit, cities I have a lot of familiarity with that, uh, in terms of consulted with them, continue to consult with some of them.  That their issue is that they're very erratic in their application of the medicines for their problems. So, in Chicago, Chicago has some of the--best gun laws in the country but doesn't use them. So that people committing a crime with a gun in Chicago, the chances going to jail very low compared to say, here in New York. Baltimore is dealing with a whole series of crises, including terrible political leadership down there, mishandling of some of the crises that they dealt with. You have to understand every American city is a different patient. And what you hope is that in your leadership, like going to a doctor for cancer, you get the right doctor who knows how to apply medicines in appropriate amounts. Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis, some of these other cities still have horrific crime numbers. Effectively, their doctors were the wrong doctors. They didn't really understand how to apply the necessary medicine. Despite very politically different mayors in the city, Giuliani, Bloomberg, now de Blasio, effectively, they all were supportive of the idea of dealing with crime and disorder. In dealing with it consistently, they never stepped away from it. They increased or lowered it–sometimes inappropriately. But there's been a consistency of focus on it here. That has not been the case in other cities.

 

BRIAN LEHRER: Former New York City police commissioner. And, by the way, former Boston and LA Police Commissioner, William Bratton. Thank you so much.

 

WILLIAM BRATTON: My pleasure, thank you.