Top 28 Quotes & Sayings by William Bratton

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American public servant William Bratton.

Last updated on December 22, 2024.

William Joseph Bratton CBE is an American law enforcement officer and businessman who served two terms as the New York City Police Commissioner. He previously served as the Commissioner of the Boston Police Department (BPD) (1993–1994) and Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) (2002–2009). He is the only person to have led the police departments of the United States' two largest cities – New York and Los Angeles.

American - Public Servant | Born: October 6, 1947

Source: Wikipedia

I've spent my life in the police profession, and I'm proud of that. But I am also very cognizant of the profession's limitations, its potential for abuse, and its potential negative impact.

William Bratton

I was still a recruit in the Boston Police Academy when I attended my first police funeral. It was September 28, 1970. I remember it still.

William Bratton

If there's one crime for which there has to be a certainty of punishment, it is gun violence.

William Bratton

You have to bare your fangs once in a while.

William Bratton

Cops have been complaining about morale since police forces were created. I used to complain about it a lot when I was a young cop.

William Bratton

American history and the black experience are inextricable. And both are inextricable from policing. Far more often than not, that's been a good thing.

William Bratton

Quality-of-life policing is based on probable cause - an officer has witnessed a crime personally or has a witness to the crime.

William Bratton

I like having ambitious people around me. I could care less if they want my job.

William Bratton

We all have a fundamental right to live free from fear, free from crime, and free from disorder - but while we share that right, we also share the duty to secure it.

William Bratton

It's an unfortunate fact that in the male black population, a very significant percentage of them, more so than whites or other minority candidates, because of convictions, prison records, are never going to be hired by a police department. That's a reality. That's not a byproduct of stop-and-frisk.

William Bratton

Slavery, our country's original sin, sat on a foundation codified by laws enforced by police, by slave-catchers.

William Bratton

Policing has to be done compassionately and consistently. You cannot police differently in Harlem than you're policing downtown. The same laws must apply. The same procedures must be employed. Certain areas at certain times may have more significant crime and require more police presence or more assertiveness, but it has to be balanced.

William Bratton

I have a temper, and it can flare from time to time, but as I've gotten older and more experienced, I think I use it in a controlled way. Oftentimes, I'm acting.

William Bratton

If an African-American or a recent immigrant - or anyone else, for that matter - can't feel secure walking into a police station or up to a police officer to report a crime, because of a fear that they're not going to be treated well, then everything else that we promise is on a shaky foundation.

William Bratton

No place is unpoliceable; no crime is immune to better enforcement efforts.

William Bratton

You cannot police a community without effectively working with the community.

William Bratton

Race is something that's always haunted American policing.

William Bratton

Many of the best parts of America's history would have been impossible without police. All the freedoms we enjoy - freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear - sit on a foundation of public safety.

William Bratton

Broken-windows enforcement is really about controlling behavior to such an extent you change it: If you deal with the little things, you can keep them from going into the big things. Zero tolerance implies zealotry. It's oppressive. And it's not achievable. You're never going to be in a position to eliminate all crime.

William Bratton

I disliked everything about the '60s.

William Bratton

Clearly, a large number of people who shouldn't have firearms actually apply through the process and obtain firearms.

William Bratton

Some cops I don't like - the corrupt, the brutal.

William Bratton

Stop-and-frisk is not something that you can stop. It is an absolutely basic tool of American policing. It would be like asking a doctor to give an examination to you without using his stethoscope.

William Bratton

We are increasingly blind for terrorism purposes and for general law enforcement purposes with the new devices and the continuing effort to make them even more secure against even court orders authorising law enforcement to have access.

William Bratton

Nothing will ever replace good old fashioned police work, but Facebook and Twitter have been like a tool on our belt, In some ways it can help them in their investigations and in some ways it can hinder

William Bratton

They really do feel under attack, rank-and-file officers and much of American police leadership, that they feel they're under attack from the federal government at the highest levels. So that's something we need to understand also, this sense of perception that becomes a reality.

William Bratton

I'm sorry, but any police department in America that tries to function without some form of 'stop and frisk,' or whatever terminology they use, is doomed to failure. It's that simple.

William Bratton

I think that's the direction we [the americans] are going to have to go, the idea of people understanding that if you see something, say something, as simple as it sounds.

William Bratton

Top 28 Quotes & Sayings by William Bratton

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