In the latest issue of City Journal, Heather MacDonald pens a fine article on the spread of CompStat, the innovative approach to policing developed in New York City, across the county:
Since the late 1990s, more than 18 police commanders have left the New York City police department to run their own agencies elsewhere. This unprecedented migration has spread the Compstat revolution–the data-driven transformation of policing begun under New York police commissioner William Bratton in 1994–across the nation. Some of the transplants are well-known: Bratton himself now heads the Los Angeles Police Department; and his former first deputy, John Timoney, has led both the Miami and the Philadelphia forces. But the diaspora also includes lesser-known young Turks who rose quickly through the NYPD’s ranks during the paradigm-shattering 1990s. Now, as chiefs in their own right, they’re proving the efficacy of analytic, accountable policing in agencies wholly dissimilar from New York’s–in one case, achieving success beyond anything seen in Gotham or elsewhere.
The entire story is well worth reading. We wish we could say that one of those 18 police commanders wound up in Houston, and that CompStat was showing similar success here. Unfortunately, Mayor White plucked Harold Hurtt out of Phoenix when he might have hired a CompStat proponent.
Oh well. We encourage the candidates for the next mayoral election to give MacDonald’s story a careful read.
