NYPD Summary

In 1994, the Commissioner of the New York Police Department, William Bratton, introduced to the policing community a data-driven management model called CompStat. This model was intended to provide police departments with a management process that produces analysis of crime and disorder data, strategic problem solving, and introduces a clear accountability structure (University of Maryland). Bratton wanted to make a huge organization, in this case the NYPD, which is notorious for its resistance to change, responsive to his type of leadership that staked out crime reduction and improving the quality of life in the neighborhoods of New York City as its top two priorities (Cole & Gertz, 2013). According to Cole and Gertz (2013), Bratton wanted

The first was that the organization lacked a sense of how important its mission of fundamental crime control was (Cole & Gertz, 2013). Secondly, the NYPD was not setting high enough expectations about what its officers could do, which resulted in less than acceptable results of what could be done. Thirdly, because a large majority of the officers in the department were content with continuing to do things as they had always been done, they were not open to exploring new strategies that could help reduce crime and improve the quality of life in their beats (Cole & Gertz, 2013). Fourthly, the department was plagued with ancient, unproductive organizational structures that did more to encourage red tape and loopholes, than to encourage teamwork to use inadequate resources effectively. Lastly, the NYPD lacked timely, accurate information about crime and public safety problems as they were happening, they were inadequately able to identify crime patterns, and they had difficulty tracking how their resources were being used. Because of this, there was little accountability between the top brass and the patrol officers (Cole & Gertz, 2013). Once the deficiencies were established, Bratton used a textbook approach to dealing with them. He brought in outsiders to get a honest diagnosis of the NYPD’s strengths and weaknesses, he incorporated different processes

Contrary to the reactive policing model, which was the main model used up until CompStat’s creation, the CompStat model initiated rapid deployment of resources to where there was a crime problem at that moment in time. This meant to head off the problem before it continued or before it escalated (University of Maryland). One of the main goals of CompStat was to identify emerging problems using real-time information and a real-time capability to attack the problem head on and quickly. As a result, CompStat applied this quick reaction philosophy to regular, recurring crime patterns, clusters, series, and/or hot spots; this philosophy also applied to recurring internal risk management incidents. This could be achieved in a multitude of ways, including changes in work schedules or reassigning crime suppression units to meet the demands of the problems that presented themselves (Godown,