The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic by William Bratton, Peter Knobler Page B
Authors: William Bratton, Peter Knobler
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a panic. There was no way out. At the last minute, I went down and got the thing postponed. Then I went to my sister Pat again.
Pat was trained as a lifeguard. She took me to the Quincy Y and taught me to swim. Well, not exactly; whenever I got in water over my head, fear overwhelmed me and my breathing went all haywire and I hyperventi-lated and struggled even harder and got tired out and sank. Pat taught me to flounder in a straight line.
When I got to the Cambridge YMCA on the day of the physical, I was anything but calm. The nerves, the anxiety jolted through me. Thank God, the pool at the Cambridge Y was only four feet deep. It was a lap pool; if it had had a deep end and a diving board, I would never have made it. I had to swim four laps back and forth, and as I looked down the lane before I dove in, I didn't see how I could do it.
Fortunately, the officer monitoring the exam was drunk. He had a reputation for being four sheets to the wind and I had trained in anticipation of this. I eased myself into the water.
I was flapping my arms, doing everything I could to stay above water, and I made one turn, then another. I could hear myself grunting—it was the sound of unmistakable panic, and with one lap to go I didn't think I'd make it. I was pulling up the rear, splashing, gurgling, and the last ten yards I don't know if I walked or swam. The attendant never noticed. He passed me. I immediately got out of the pool, ran into the locker room, and threw up.
On October 7, 1970, one day after my twenty-third birthday, I was hired onto the Boston police force. There were 157 of us in that class of officers, with three blacks and no women. Of the 2,800 cops on the Boston force in 1970, only fifty-five were minorities, with no women. In December, the Boston police hired an additional fifty or so officers, and then the lawsuits began. The discrepancy between a civilian population that was 20 percent minority and a police force that was 2 percent minority was so clear that various groups began to protest it in court. No one was hired on the Boston Police Department for the next several years while these suits concerning discriminatory hiring practices were moving through the system, ultimately resulting in federal consent decrees controlling minority hiring. I had just made it.
As a prospective candidate, I was interviewed by the number-two man in the department, Superintendent-in-Chief Bill Taylor, who said to the person with him, “This is a kid who's going to go far in this job. This kidcould be commissioner.” So I got on the Boston police and began pulling down the magnificent sum of $153.85 a week. First thing they did was send me and the rest of my class to the police academy.
We were supposed to be trained for twelve weeks, but just before Thanksgiving, in order to beef up the downtown area and save on overtime pay for regular officers, they interrupted our training and put us out in the street. These were the days when people from all over the area came downtown to do their holiday shopping and see the Christmas lights on Boston Common, and Boston was gridlocked from Thanksgiving through Christmas. We were rushed through qualifying with firearms, given what we needed to know for the short term, and put out on traffic duty, undercover, and pickpocket details. We changed from our khaki academy uniforms into our dress blues. I was so proud to put on that blue uniform. About seven weeks after coming into the Boston Police Academy, there I was, a gun on my hip, directing traffic and freezing my rear end off in front of Symphony Hall. I had finally made it. I was a Boston cop on the streets of Boston! Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.
I enjoyed traffic duty. (I had started at age one and a half!) I was in control, like when I was a crossing guard at Edward Southworth, except the girls weren't chasing me home anymore. I was standing in the street in charge of the flow of huge numbers of people and vehicles, all stopping
Pat was trained as a lifeguard. She took me to the Quincy Y and taught me to swim. Well, not exactly; whenever I got in water over my head, fear overwhelmed me and my breathing went all haywire and I hyperventi-lated and struggled even harder and got tired out and sank. Pat taught me to flounder in a straight line.
When I got to the Cambridge YMCA on the day of the physical, I was anything but calm. The nerves, the anxiety jolted through me. Thank God, the pool at the Cambridge Y was only four feet deep. It was a lap pool; if it had had a deep end and a diving board, I would never have made it. I had to swim four laps back and forth, and as I looked down the lane before I dove in, I didn't see how I could do it.
Fortunately, the officer monitoring the exam was drunk. He had a reputation for being four sheets to the wind and I had trained in anticipation of this. I eased myself into the water.
I was flapping my arms, doing everything I could to stay above water, and I made one turn, then another. I could hear myself grunting—it was the sound of unmistakable panic, and with one lap to go I didn't think I'd make it. I was pulling up the rear, splashing, gurgling, and the last ten yards I don't know if I walked or swam. The attendant never noticed. He passed me. I immediately got out of the pool, ran into the locker room, and threw up.
On October 7, 1970, one day after my twenty-third birthday, I was hired onto the Boston police force. There were 157 of us in that class of officers, with three blacks and no women. Of the 2,800 cops on the Boston force in 1970, only fifty-five were minorities, with no women. In December, the Boston police hired an additional fifty or so officers, and then the lawsuits began. The discrepancy between a civilian population that was 20 percent minority and a police force that was 2 percent minority was so clear that various groups began to protest it in court. No one was hired on the Boston Police Department for the next several years while these suits concerning discriminatory hiring practices were moving through the system, ultimately resulting in federal consent decrees controlling minority hiring. I had just made it.
As a prospective candidate, I was interviewed by the number-two man in the department, Superintendent-in-Chief Bill Taylor, who said to the person with him, “This is a kid who's going to go far in this job. This kidcould be commissioner.” So I got on the Boston police and began pulling down the magnificent sum of $153.85 a week. First thing they did was send me and the rest of my class to the police academy.
We were supposed to be trained for twelve weeks, but just before Thanksgiving, in order to beef up the downtown area and save on overtime pay for regular officers, they interrupted our training and put us out in the street. These were the days when people from all over the area came downtown to do their holiday shopping and see the Christmas lights on Boston Common, and Boston was gridlocked from Thanksgiving through Christmas. We were rushed through qualifying with firearms, given what we needed to know for the short term, and put out on traffic duty, undercover, and pickpocket details. We changed from our khaki academy uniforms into our dress blues. I was so proud to put on that blue uniform. About seven weeks after coming into the Boston Police Academy, there I was, a gun on my hip, directing traffic and freezing my rear end off in front of Symphony Hall. I had finally made it. I was a Boston cop on the streets of Boston! Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.
I enjoyed traffic duty. (I had started at age one and a half!) I was in control, like when I was a crossing guard at Edward Southworth, except the girls weren't chasing me home anymore. I was standing in the street in charge of the flow of huge numbers of people and vehicles, all stopping
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