CBS New YorkNEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Returning Police Commissioner William Bratton will be sworn into office just after midnight New Year’s Day.
Bratton will be sworn in at a private ceremony at NYPD Headquarters in Lower Manhattan. Mayor Bill de Blasio will also take the oath of office at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.
Bratton also ran the NYPD from 1994 to 1996, when he worked for Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Their tactics are largely credited with beginning a sharp decrease in the city’s crime rate.
His reappointment has drawn criticism and plans for a protest.
The October 22nd Coalition against police misconduct accused Bratton of creating a hostile environment between police officers and communities.
“We can look to the bone-chilling reality of Bratton’s New York, when he was NYPD Commissioner between 1994 and 1996,” the group said in a news release. “Allegations of mistreatment, police brutality, deaths in custody and unjustified shootings became so serious during Bratton’s tenure that Amnesty International – which usually investigates reports of human rights abuses in countries whose governments are unpopular with the U.S. government — sent a team from London to investigate.”
The group said the city saw an explosion in arrests between 1994 and 1996 – with a total of more than 268,000 arrests in 1995. The group claimed most of the arrests were for nonviolent misdemeanors such as “illegal peddling” and truancy. The group also criticized Bratton for the use of the stop-and-frisk policing strategy under his watch.
Bratton advocated a “broken window” theory of reducing crime, CBS 2′s Marcia Kramer reported earlier this month. He went after minor, petty crimes such as fare jumping in order to help reduce bigger crimes.
He also implemented the then-revolutionary CompStat method of tracking crime.
Bratton has also led the Boston and Los Angeles police departments. He has worked for several private security firms since 2009.