QPP 55: John Yohe and Billy Gorta

These two guys started compstat. Like literally. One wrote the code and they pressed the buttons that made it go. Also you can’t beat this review on twitter.

Audio:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/49343077

And on the youtube (Photo courtesy of John Yohe):

Unedited automatic incorrect transcript. But even with all the errors it can still come in handy:

QPP 55 John Yohe and Billy Gorta

[00:00:04] Hello and welcome to quality policing, I am Peter Moskos. And I always say I’m thrilled to be here, but this time I really am because I feel like I’m in the Blues brothers and we’re getting the band back together. I’m here with Billy Gorta and John Yohe, who are both retired NYPD and particularly of interest to me because these two guys were either the the geniuses or the flunkies or both are behind the origination of NYPD’s famous Comstat, something a lot of people talk about and not many people understand. And maybe this is the first time I can put in a plug for my book, which isn’t out yet, but will be out in early 2023, which is on the crime drop. And that’s how I met these guys. I actually met Billy at a bar in Queens after a Mets game through a mutual friend, and he set me up with half the people I interviewed in my book, quite frankly. So welcome guys, and it’s good to see you. I’ve met Billy in person. I’ve never even seen John in a picture, but. I don’t know where you want to start, how you became cops or you want to jump right to to to start. I was born when I was very young and then I got old. I’m done. And me, I was actually I was a Georgetown Foreign Service. I felt the calling. I was a monk at Villanova for a few years. And then when I had left the order and came home, I’m laying in bed. My brother and I was still, you know, I moved back home and my brother hadn’t got married yet, and two of us grew up in a room together. He was on the job for maybe a year and I said, Hey, Nick, don’t you got to go to work today? And he says, Yeah, picks up the phone.

[00:01:58] He goes, This is yo, I need an ID day, OK? He puts the phone down. He says, OK, I went to work. This is a job for me, so I’ve put in for it. I was too old to get Nasrallah by a couple of weeks and they end up calling me for the city that I took the job. And what year was that? Not 1985 1995. So you go to Brooklyn, right? If I remember correctly. I was went to what they called an issue 13. That was the seven three nine seven five Browns released New York, Bed-Stuy. And then from there I went. I stayed in that either. There was a scientific seven five then to this thing called Toprak, which did the three, those three Brooklyn North Precinct again. And then when that ended, I went back to the seven three, and when I got promoted sergeant, they moved me across the street to Bushwick, to the precinct, which once you were in Brooklyn, not long enough you were considered incorrigible and you couldn’t deal with normal people any longer. So you were kind of right. There was a car crash somewhere along here. I want to mention that because I think it becomes relevant later becomes irrelevant. Every month when I pay my mortgage, I tell you that the I don’t know was probably, let’s see. I got it made sergeant in nineteen ninety one, so I don’t know, maybe 88, 89. Whatever I whatever it was, we responded to a gun run on the border two seven three two seven five and we everybody’s going to like the sirens. And it wasn’t just a gun run. Housing was in pursuit of a man with a gun. So we’re on New Latza Avenue.

[00:03:35] We passed a line, a stand cause heading towards a red light. And as we got to the red light, the light turned green. I can remember this. Anyhow, we’re going in. Next thing in old Brooklyn North Task Force Van comes the opposite way. And when we collide, they t bonus with the 180 and go up into a brick wall. So they told us like and nobody’s wearing seatbelts back then, right? What was seatbelts? Yeah. First time I put a seatbelt on was the day I left the punch board and I said they will give me a ticket. So they they told us, we make a long story short, I was on a sergeant’s list. So they eventually stuck me inside in the seventh grade to be what’s called the station house manager. And my back was messed up anyhow. And you don’t want to do it. You don’t want to be out sick if come promotion time or else you’re going to get skipped. So I would do the station house manager, and that’s how I got my basic CompStat start. All right. Because as house manager, you’re playing with computers. Let’s that’s what we did, the robbery stats basically every month or you had to send the numbers up to headquarters of the chief of Patrol’s office. So say, for argument’s sake, the seven three precinct did two hundred and eighty five robberies a month. We put it on a little disk in a program of slot, which was probably the simplest precursor ever to Microsoft Office. But it had floor integrated modules and we put the 285 in there and we’d send the five and a quarter inch floppy disk up to headquarters, the chief patrol, and they read it into a master database.

[00:05:17] And as long as you stay within your numbers, you’ve hit your averages to 85 and you stay between, say, 270 and 290. You didn’t hear anything. If you if if went off the charts, all of a sudden you might get a phone call. And if it fell real low, you might get a phone call, but otherwise don’t rock the boat. Keep everything steady. And that’s how we how we did business. It wasn’t that gee, 285 people got robbed this month. We should do something about that, and it was, well, just don’t let it be in a quarter. And I should point out, I don’t need you to repeat stuff you said here before, Bill, you’ve been on this podcast before in a thrilling two-part episode that got literally dozens of views, actually, maybe hundreds, even. But so you don’t I don’t need you to repeat yourself. But but what’s what’s the brief story? Do you know the early days in the NYPD and how did you two meet? We remember marine patrols. They’re all smiles. Was that soldier at the time? Sergeant Yeah, OK. You know, I have been I have been in the Manhattan south of Manhattan south. I was the special projects. I was the the borough administrator, the the chief that he was a piece of work and we used to call the hallway down to his office. That was Torpedo Alley. And it comes out of the office staring at you, walk on a 40 feet. It’s like, OK, he hates me. I hate him. I’ll say, Hey, I got to do something here. So I wound up, you know, as I had some talent, recognizable talent that’s all wound up a chief patrol. You could tell, you know and what? I well, the typing is a less good part of it, you know, but I can I can bang him out if you need it.

[00:06:55] And I did. Well, the type is bad, but it’s better than mostly most of the cops. But because they don’t recognize what those things are written on the keys. That said, you know, they somebody make a report compiled reported something. I’ll do this under that. You know, my I, you know, but I got into the pay because basically, you know, it was an early admission to college and then with all the freedom that entails basically drank my way into the police department and then, you know, was a cop acquaintance, you know, made sergeant. When we moved upstate for a couple of years, I worked in the Bronx. Robert came back to Manhattan. Here we are. And then to the burrow and onward. The Chief Patrol and glory glory. Let me ask you, so what do you got up there? They had an need for which was the equivalent, I guess, of the station house manager for the chief patrol. He was the person that compiled all those disks at the other end of it. Yeah. So I answered the ED. Little did I know that, you know, Salvatore was a chief. It was pleasant enough even, you know, but my immediate supervisor who hired me, the man probably has a huge voodoo doll with Lilo and sticks it all the time. So bygones, be bygones. We’ll just leave it to Jay. I was trying to say, Let’s say you beat me to that job. Yeah, I was his personal punching bag. So I don’t know why. Every week I come in and get another beaten, OK, whatever. So I was actually looking to get out. So anyway, I said, I got to get out of you. I’ll go back to the seven three. I don’t care.

[00:08:41] And that’s happened to be the time when Giuliani got elected and the changeover started and they were all running around like crazy people. Because of that, you want to keep his job and they’re going through place by place, assessing what they want to do and. There’s a soul together, there’s a change in administration, so Giuliani’s elected a late 93 takes over ninety four. Yeah. So David Dinkins was voted out of office. Ray Kelly gets the boot and incomes Bratton, and he brings over his buddy from Transit Maple. So they were both transit cops. This is before the merger of transit, housing and city police in New York City, which happened in, I think April 95, if I’m not mistaken, is for maybe. Ninety six was April Fool’s Day six and Bratton gets his team in there, which is. And you know, these people yet I’m talking about Maple Animal and Julian and probably a few people. I’m not thinking of me. I know them all. Mr. Yeah. Well, the same. Billy was a true special skill. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, I knew animal when I was a patrol, he he became the disorder control guy and I was in with his call program liaison. So he was a program and I was liaison, so I would go out and do his thing. And you know, so you know, so part of the whole tactical response to this order that was Louis and I was the always, you know, I was on both sides. The chief wants this, chief likes that, chief hates this, you know? And you know, Timothy, I know from around and Julian, I wanted to win the South. Hmm. So, you know, when I was at the burrow in and before, you know, he was a future commander there.

[00:10:42] And when did you feel that things are going to be different? Because I’m going to make a long story short, I’m going to say things were kind of the same for 25 years before this in some way. Well, one animal walked in there that was right off the bat. You could tell there was a change. I was just gonna jump out of order a little bit. But he would present himself as an almost an ogre. People would tremble when Chief Animal would come in and get along. And, you know, as we had this thing going, he used to take great pleasure in screaming from his office in the one side of the chief of patrol and then later chief of the department’s office. How did you get it in your own ego to be sitting there watching me like a man walk dead man walking, you know, then you’d walk in. He closed the door and have a cigar. But like everything going today. But he was. He was certainly a character in Maple Maple. I wouldn’t known from a hole in the wall. Well, I know was one day he shows up next to my desk and I’m like, I don’t know who this man is, but people seem to be all jumping up and doing this. That and the other thing and not knowing which way to go. Well, and I was sitting there just like this in front of a computer. Yes, sir. Can I help you? Yeah. Well, we came in with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, you know? I mean, it was a straight guy from what I hear from my ancestry guy extraordinaire. So we were all, you know, house mouse little pussies and we were we were afraid to go out on the street and face bad guys.

[00:12:10] So I mean, all the time, you know, and I’m like with some people, that might actually been the case, but you know, just, you know, we have been places and saying things that, you know, the Pats adult should say so. And anyway, you know, at any rate, you know, so he came in. But then it comes out. We saw how the Senate functions. You know, it’s like, you know, you want, you know, you want to do all those things. And that’s always the same in the police department and they’re doing it now again. They would have all the cops kill all his assholes out of his civilian office. This that they put them on the street until the police commission needs a report or the any report that it’s get those folks back. So we had to go through that process. You know? And how did this idea of confi of getting timely, accurate information happen, when did when did anybody care despite looking character shows up in front of my desk? You know, with his bowler and two-tone shoes and his bow tie. And it says it basically says, you know, look, I’ve been all over the police department on trying to get up to date statistics. What can you do for me? I said, Well, we get these numbers every, you know, month or whatever it is, from the chief, from the precincts, and I ate them up. I said, Let me take a look at this thing and see what I can do, but I’m pretty sure that I can manipulate the program that they sent me the dish. I can give you these seven majors that we call them the murder rate. Part one crimes my name, and I’m still on a weekly basis.

[00:13:48] And, you know, just the crimes themselves we saw it with, and you can have a report every week the same way I do. He says, How long is this going to take me? Six months, seven months? I said, No, I think I can do it in a couple of days or week. Maybe. Let me see if he’s like, You’re serious, right? Yeah. So that was one of the big snowstorm came to New York and I scrunched up, scrounged up a laptop from the office and I couldn’t get home on Long Island Railroad anyhow. February ninety four. Yeah, I trudged to my grandmother’s house down on Baltic Street in Brooklyn from the Atlantic Avenue train station through the snow, and I sat there and basically just monitoring what we had into. The initial version of what came to be known as CompStat and then that, but before before April turned up at John’s desk, my understanding was is that Brian was going to have a weekly meeting with somebody from each of the bureau chief’s offices, not necessarily the bureau chief. Now they meet all the time and executive said the. So there’s going to have somebody from each of the chief’s offices come and basically give the state of play, you know? And so Maple was like, you know, can you get weekly comments nights and asking the chiefs and they were like, No, you know, because what happens? All the preliminary guys get in trouble because they know that they are not quite right yet. And until they go to arrested crime coding and the FBI. And, you know, so we can’t we can’t do that. It’s not it’s not impossible. So that’s how they can because things like it was, it was impossible, witchcraft and probably illegal to consider Jews in other states.

[00:15:33] So up to date stats. And then Mr. Maple says, OK, let’s how do we do this, you know? And here we are. But the precursor was he wanted to just it was tell me what the state of play is. So when I got this thing actually started, which sent out that, you know, I sent out a modified version of the program to all the commands, and they were to fill this out every week and send the dead disk to the burrow. And then the burrows in turn, would drive the disc. The master disc up to headquarters or the individual. Just so I would forget if we began with a borrowed, this cannot be the way they were supposed to pick up, and we gave them a thought that it was somewhere around. It was Valentine’s Day, right? Yes. And we sat there. Valentine’s Day would know. Oh, that’s right. Yes. But that’s not true. That 12 months from from from Chinatown as a Valentine. That’s a good Valentine’s message. Yeah. Well, for some, it was. This wasn’t because then these things didn’t so show up. So, you know, I’m piddly. Sergeant Neal, what do I know? But the mean brutal lieutenant governor at the time, you know, subsequently happened. But he picked up that thought. He beat these people like mashed potatoes, saying, You tell it better. But then you have that disc, and we were going to have that. Just to know whether the sound is my line was always, Let’s settle here will be the chief patrol picking up the line. And he wasn’t even a felon. But you have to say also 10 o’clock in the morning, we’d wait until a trip, you know, because we read him to the machine. And for the first few weeks, it was bizarro.

[00:17:13] Like Billy said, they they might have all been those hieroglyphic characters on the keyboards from Hollywood Typekit, and you’d have a precinct that would put down that they had like twenty six hundred rapes this week. Hello. You know what’s going on over there? Oh, it was an error. Let me um, let me just mention here because I’m I don’t want to take away from your genius because at the time it was. But I want to mention how when we talk about this computer program, how simple it seems in hindsight, which is all this is, is a compiling spreadsheet right at all, basically. I mean, the fact that you get into a database, but yes, but with all and with all due respect to my to my partner, John, it was more a matter of well than skill. You know, it’s like we’re going to bolus through and get this and then teach the precincts and we have to go out to the prisons to spread the word. And it was like, you know, doing this not to denigrate with John things because it’s time pretty, pretty bang up job. But that was only part of it. I mean, you were also constrained by how big, how big with a floppy disk back back then five and a quarter and how much memory, I mean, what they hold, what 360 K. So that’s not m k. That’s no. Yeah. Then we went to we graduated to the small one. So the three here. And then, you know, I mean, something grew over the first few years. I mean, we were able to basically squeeze out a lot of technological changes from within a department. We wanted to add arrests sort of report to correlate with the crimes.

[00:18:51] Well, we used to have to go down to misdeed a computer. Oh yeah. And on a regular basis and threaten them with all sorts of bodily pain to to give us anything we have to give it. Yeah, they give it to you on the green and white paper. Yeah, white straight paper that came out a little printed with the chips on the side, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you have a mainframe? You understand? You can write a query to the mainframe with these parameters and give that to me. That’s all I want. I mean, I can see that that would. Perfectly, I guess, illustrate this was when we had the meetings we used to have to pack up everything we had on the 13th floor, put it on chairs and that, yeah, put it on your desk on chairs, the rollins’s down to the second floor, first or second floor press room and eventually the floor, the eighth floor. OK, well, we had the meetings. So one day we go in and we said, Look, this is ridiculous. You have the network in here. There’s a limit. Can’t we just instead of pushing these machines down here every day, every week, twice a week at the time, we having meetings? Can’t we just access to the data that’s on there to the landing? Oh no, we’re going to have to do a study. There’s too many why in the ceiling district eight months, but about a bar? OK, so Billy and I go over to John. All right. Right? Yeah. Well, you know, we play a hundred foot both the laying cable, you least charge this to the department. That’s one thing I don’t have in my book. Did you have to pay out of your pocket or tens at the World Trade Center? The little maps, you know? You know, you always put your hands in the pocket.

[00:20:45] You know what the hell? So we opened a window up on 13 and took the cable and we put it back in the window down on it. Oh, boss, we told him, Well, where is everything shut up? We’re going to push the chairs. Oh, this is great. The next thing you know, the commanding officer from MSD, he’s he’s having an embolism. You can’t have a wire out the window of the building. Well, I’ll tell you what. You go up there. You see Chief Animal, you tell him you’re going to pull his way around that way. You’re up in the ceiling. Beautiful. We will white. What is that misty? Management information systems division. Whatever happens, it doesn’t mean much. You knew you had the complete backing of animal, and it’s all animal and natural. Let me tell you, give you an example how much these guys stood behind you when the three or four precincts split. OK, and they created and do the three Twitter. We had a and here’s a nice, beautiful man. Joe Esposito, but lovely guy. Yeah. What happened was we have no way to really do these statistics when you had a three tree that just popped up out of nowhere. What are we to compare it to? So what we did was for comparative sake and to allow some sort of rational discussion, we created a fictitious. Don’t worry about that, the tornado watch. So if I disappear, I’m probably being electrocuted or blown to pick up the slack, John. Yeah. So what the hell was a fictitious comparison testicle? Oh yeah. So we we made this fictitious three five precinct where we combine the two numbers the next day. I know the phone’s ringing. I’m like this. Yes, sergeant. Yeah, says Mo.

[00:22:40] Oh, hey, how you doing, boss? He goes. So what started off is, how you doing, yo? And he asked about it. I said, Look, we’ve got to make this three five just the competitive stakes. So the conversation eventually is like devolved. To listen to me, yo yo son of a bitch. Hold on. Backed up. I’ll be with you in a minute, please. I went back in and I got the animal and a picks up the phone. I’m standing in his office says, Yeah, hey Joe, how are you doing? Yeah. Uh huh.. Uh huh.. So what did he tell you? Goddamn duck boat. Yeah, I had a similar one maple when we merged housing it. So we had no separate housing stats. So my get this bright idea. This is why don’t we get someone from each of the the pieces, the housing precincts and we get the last year’s stats because we only need the last year and we go through the seven to get the sort of four their areas and we’ll just pull them out by his side of the table on them. And that’s all that’s housing. That’s not housing. This is housing. That’s not housing. And just make the stats for last year for housing. So I got them there, and of course, they’re on vacation, so they’re, you know, they’re taking their time and the truth and housing, there’s no reason people got to go back. This is no good, you know, this is taking too long. They have to go back. So go to many places. You know, it’s breaking my balls. He wants them to go back. You know, he says, really? Again, I was a lieutenant at the time, and this guy is a chance. This is Billy.

[00:24:12] You just tell him, you’re in charge. Doesn’t he understand? Well, don’t you understand you’re in charge? That’s the end of it. So look back with everything I was like. Instead of three stripes, I had three stars. It felt like, Oh yeah, and we wanted the two of us will have an office in the building together. Oh yeah. Can’t be all around fun. Hide your babies. Oh no, no. I thought we were pretty nice guys. I thought, you know somebody, you know, one one or the other, maybe. But if the tour was working in that office, they would be all a mess. But this is what they used to hang my picture up in the precincts. He was working there seven five. They had my picture hanging up in a lounge and the cops would sit here and they throw darts at me with a bull’s eye and a seven five. Well, they said, you know, they’re having a good time. Some of the other places, you know, it’s it’s interesting to see I was grasping at straws. I could see the cops headless, but the seven five they were making fast. Yeah. If I can quote Jack Maple here, because, you know, he passed away in 2001 at a younger person. And I accessed. I was given copies of interviews that Chris Mitchell did with him in 1997 and 98, which feature heavily in my book. And that’s Jack Maple says. I said I got to get this crime weekly. And of course, they said it couldn’t be done. They could collect the data, but they weren’t required. Do nothing on a weekly thing at all. Never would they have to do that. It goes on. And he says the chiefs were feeling me out a little.

[00:25:49] I remember the chief of detectives guys saying, the chief says, You can’t get this information weekly. You can have it monthly. So I go to the chief of detectives and they say, Listen, I need to get information from your detectives weekly. We go back and forth. And he says, You know, you’re lucky. I like you. I said, You got it wrong. You’re lucky, I like you. But they didn’t take him serious at first. They just because he dressed uniquely and he came out and he was a lieutenant in transit. You know, he was just some bad punk, you know? Yeah, but they and the man was a genius. He was a genius. But he was such a he was a great guy, too. I slept there. I literally I slept there on a cot. And for a while I slept in his office until I eventually got my own office upstairs. Yes, which happened to be the office of my initial main tormentor mentioned previously. But he used to come in and sneak in at 5:30, 6:00 in the morning, put it and the bed was ahead handbag, you know, and he’d get right up here, right next to your head when you sleep in the morning. Chilly up there now. So you guys look, it’s a civil service job. You’re paid, you know, a living wage, I think is what we call today, but you’re literally sleeping there. What is what’s driving you? Why? I mean, you don’t have to be doing this. I’ll answer quickly and let Billy. They’ll probably be more relevant. But when I got on the job and the whole time I was there, we always said the job on a level, OK, it’s all B.S. We go about all thing, but it ain’t on a level, you know? And it was frustrating to us at that time.

[00:27:33] We weren’t even allowed to approach the non bookies and drug dealers and stuff. They would have the machines going in the place. It was a joke now. We were finally in a position where the job could be on a level where people, we really felt this sense of pride, not in ourselves, but in what we were doing that the kids, they didn’t have to sleep in the bathtubs at night, so they wouldn’t get hit with stray rounds. People are starting to use the playgrounds again because you couldn’t go out on the playground. You get hit with a stray on on the seashore. Mama would go to work and she’d never come home. And all of a sudden we started to see these numbers falling and people, you know, actually coming out of their homes like after a war. And given that opportunity. To do that was it was a moral obligation, and it felt like no pain whatsoever. My kid thought my child, my young, my eldest, he thought the phone. Was it was called didactic? But what we were doing was bigger than ourselves, and it was the right thing to do. Well, John, first when we go off line, I’m going to want to talk about the word briefly. But but but in the meantime, it’s, you know, it was important, weren’t we all the sudden? You know, most says just Chevron said, there people, people abusing you, you know, or whatever. You’re right. There’s some digital, you know, it’s like you’re making no progress in the world. And all of a sudden, you know, this thing is building. And you know, it’s important for all the reasons Johnson is. It was important work. No one was hired less now. Ninety four. So I had my third child.

[00:29:24] I was working on my degree at Columbia and I was working every hour God gave to cancer. And it’s just this is what we do because it’s important work and you don’t want to get that feeling and then a job, by the way, you know? And we go off on Oliver worried about eloquent, well, not unique either. I mean, you know, we did our thing on the computers and our desks, but there are guys out there grinding that grind every day with that same sense of dedication and commitment. Right now. And, you know, their lives are on the line every minute. They go there, they go there with no concern for themselves, for their families because they know they’re doing the right thing. And that’s the whole point of being a police officer this way in it. I mean, yeah, I’m happy for if my book ends up being somewhat of an ode to civil service. I’m happy to have that be the case because it’s there’s an underrated nobility in that. But I think a lot of people not just don’t understand, but even can disparage a time that people care. They want to make the city a better place there. From here, they live here. It’s it’s a message that the NYPD. Well, police in general and do a very good job of putting out. Well, I don’t think they help themselves after we left, because, you know, you’re going to have too much of a good thing, you know, and we always went with Bratton’s philosophy, you know, sharp pencils and explain what that means. It’s not a lot of common phrase. Let me just say, OK, we wanted accurate reporting. Don’t fudge. The numbers. Don’t massaged the numbers. Don’t tell me because this poor woman was sodomized and raped that you’re going to put it down on.

[00:31:12] The report is a sodomy, which isn’t one of the seven forms of harassment, rape or plead down to an assault on a police officer and put it down as a misdemeanor assault because it’s automatically funny. We don’t want any. We want an accurate portrayal. It’s not helping anybody. Give us some fudging numbers. So that’s what what’s the truth? And we’ll work on it. That was the point. I mean, there was a time there was a scene on a ninth person and they were and we’re still on a second floor. But Louie and Jack was shopping in a nice room. They were just they were on an edge and they were going to slice this guy to ribbons and cause a big jump. And all of a sudden the guy gets up and he says, OK, I have X number of robberies. Why would this z was that it was this B? Was this C as we did this? We did that. We did the other thing we made. We made an arrest here with the two arrests there. We interviewed these guys. We did this. We did that to put more concerned with democracy and Louie into like breathless when it was all but it couldn’t. They couldn’t catch their breath. This guy just bowled them over. It’s like, I’m walking Doze. And they were like, OK, you know, we were going to give you a kick up the yes, but we can’t because your numbers went up. If you were working, you know you’re not responsible for human nature and you come in. But as long as you are trying and you are honest and working hard on. But I think what the ones I used to get, I used to have them print me out like hundreds of reports, all the burglaries to come in and I sit there all and read every single one and and make make the crib notes and then hand them.

[00:32:50] And then you’d see the guy, the commander, get up there and start talking all sorts of nonsense. And then Ammon, when you knew him. He would sit in this chair and he’d start to look at me like this. And then he puts his glasses back and he’d be rocking and push the glasses building and I’d be sitting back there behind the screen. Here it comes with like holding hands under the table. Oh my god. Here it comes. Here we go. But, you know, I was like, you know, I’ve always been surprised that there has never been a gunplay at our camps that maybe because you guys just see them, their career died. What were their life plans just ended? You know, now I got to get out and do something else. It’s like, Holy shit. I mean, that was a that was a high wire and there was no next want to be mean, you know, necessarily. But it is New York where people wave good morning with one finger to their neighbors, you know? So it was the way it is, but you had CEOs getting sick into the little fire extinguisher box in the post. We had a lieutenant crawling on her hands and knees behind us on the floor so they wouldn’t see her trying to get out. He’s yelled, Lieutenant, get off the floor, get off the floor. But they will. Not all is shit. Yes, it was. It was crazy. Some of them. But again, when I was started to allude to initially was after we left. They kept pushing it and pushed it, trying to squeeze that last drop of blood out of their last drop of juice out of the great. And you can’t do that. And the surgeon? No, no.

[00:34:32] The only thing they did was we had meetings schedule. So like there were eight burrows, you know, and you came in, you came in in a rotation every four weeks, you were going to be there. And so, you know, you may come in and you had to be prepared. But because of that, we were also able to pull inspections. So the chief patrol had an investigative unit right to go what the hell they were call. But they would go out like the day before a meeting, and they would go put some 60 ones at the precinct, you know, to make sure it was all on the level. So that way. And I’m like, I said, one of the side bullshit and achievement level. Hey, look, this is this is a robbery you have is a great loss. And this, yeah, is a felony that you have is a misdemeanor. What’s with these and hand them the six they want? So they knew they had a, you know, there was some checks on it. They we couldn’t just get up there and do the old social, you know, we would check on all of that. So then they got rid of the scheduled meeting. So it’s like, Oh, you have a problem, we’re going to call you in or whatever, or if we haven’t seen you in a long time. And let’s face it, now that that doesn’t count, then I’ll say, OK, yeah, whenever. And I’ll just make up that bullshit when the time comes. Yeah, but really, they I mean, at least in my opinion, they just took some of these things beyond the pale to stop and frisk stuff like that. You, you you. It comes a point where you did that start to happen.

[00:35:58] That was that was after we were out of there. I think Kelly was in there or whatever. I mean, there was always a problem with stop and frisk. As you remember, one of the early concept managers who were down on to some chief said, you know why this requirement collars and borrow anti-crime doesn’t. And that, she said, it’s because the borough of anti-crime obeys the Constitution, United States of America. Then I had to go upstairs to get Leary out of a meeting. So there was always a problem with it when they started counting it like it was something important as opposed to, you know, the idea of, like, What do you do all day? Yeah, I don’t see a kid walking on the street and he’s leaning over to one side and he keeps grabbing his crotch every twenty two seconds and he’s wearing a Parker in the middle of July. And you know, all this sort of stuff will be new experience for all of us will say. But just because there’s two guys on a pool, it doesn’t mean you say, OK, your buddy, I’m going to call. You know, and as I said last time, Peter, you know, every category, Terry and I have to write something about it now just just to show that you read it and you understand some of it. You know, to me, the traffic and stops weren’t counted accurately back then, and once they started being counted as when it started going really haywire, because then it became that productivity stack we’re talking about, it became good for its own sake rather than a What are you actually doing about the problem? Mm-Hmm. You know, animals, said Ben. He’s also been on this podcast. You know, he said he was tough.

[00:37:37] These are the problem with Comstat, he said. It’s it in a room with 100 people or more. And there was a downside to that. But I don’t think you could turn an organization like the NYPD around as quickly and as dramatically if you’re not willing to break a couple of legs along the way and bruise a couple egos. It’s not going to happen. This was my chance, my opportunity, and it became clear to me that you have to be a tough guy to do it. No regrets, no recovery. But one of you, I think I’m quoting one of you now, just said, Is this when Bratton left us, when the ideas ran out or I might have been? That was me, but know because there was one idea Bratton and I’ve heard this from other chiefs as well. Bratton changed with mutated six or eight times. If he was still, he still commissioner to be 30 times, the guy sees what’s going on or what has to be done. And let’s do that. Not let’s stick with the same thing as I say he was. He was the guy, the first guy who wasn’t just a regular, you know, regular windshield cop to say, Hey, why do we do this? I mean, the cop said it all the time because they could see just the general stupidity of the of the hierarchy, but didn’t like the first time a guy with authority goes, Why do we do this? And I said, Well, listen to that, you know? So, you know, he was he would have he would have adapted and adapt and adapt to the concept may not even be what it is. It may be gone. We may have, you know, some nuclear fusion.

[00:39:05] Yeah, because he would look like, Billy said as certain situations got down to near zero. I mean, you know, you got millions of people in the city who built 300 homicides if you’re not going to erase the original city. I’m so sorry. So you’re a homicide. No one’s outside the gates of God to be. Yeah, yeah. You got to change changed tactics a little bit or a lot of bit, depending on the circumstance, and not just keep beating the same drum. Now they went the total opposite. I feel sorry for them because from what I read, you know, the current mayor, he wants to try to revive some of these parts of broken windows and minor crimes, but they’re up against a whole different situation than we were back then. Back then, we have to effect change in our own culture. And then we were able to draw in after a while, the DA’s offices and stuff and parole and things like that, because they sure had and they participated in the meetings and we got. Now you have it where you can go out and lock up 200 people. If every judge is to let them, it’s like let them loose. Bruce Times 100. And if the courts aren’t going to back you, if the district attorneys are going rogue, you got bail reform. What are you going to do? You can’t if you can’t keep these predators away. How are you going to do this? And the nightmare of change, you know, not all of which is bad, but some of it is. And there’s also a witness contact info turned over to the defense team, which is, I care, I’ve not, you know, I don’t know this firsthand, but is having a chilling effect on people talking and I feel limited to the skull.

[00:40:53] Do that you? Well, especially then if you’re you know, you’re not detained after arrest, after you finish on somebody and they’re right back there and you knows your downstairs neighbors things you know people are complaining about, like, you know, the City Council strip vending enforcement from the NYPD. Well, that’s their right. But but then you can’t expect police to enforce spending. That’s right. And then just selling the stuff they just ripped out of the store down the block, and it’s not safe to call three one to report reporters. Yeah. So I mean, that’s it’s just that, you know? All right. I’m going to go into the vernacular that’s just fucking stupid. So, so that Latin. So but so, you know, things have the laws of change that makes it harder. Cops need legal authority to do whatever they do. There is one thing that, you know, so they say it can’t be done, but that’s what they were saying back in your days to. So I was still hoping that someone, some minds are smart enough to figure out. Some way to actually, you know, deter crime and arrest the bad guys, it doesn’t seem like too much damage, you know? And you know, I’ve written something and a British policing journal, and the thing is, is that, you know, not only do you have to have the has to be the right time, you have to have the right people, you have to have the right people lined up in a row. It’s not as if John and I were there and we didn’t have. We didn’t come up with that fit an achievement. Charles us. We’d still be punching numbers in or write in reports and you know. But you know, you had to have animal got to have bread.

[00:42:29] You had to have had calories to help you run the building. You had to have 10 minutes. You had to have bread and without one of us is missing. I don’t think that works. You know, so you know, so the thing is, it’s like you have to have the stack of people that was there. Yeah, yeah. And then you have to have the the idea to the idea and then the moxie to pull it off. So that’s a lot to ask. You know, I mean, we have like super geniuses. I don’t think so. But we were right place. Right time, right quote. You know, when you talked about CompStat being rough and Iman rocking back and forth, which is a great description, by the way, especially because I can picture I’ve never seen him do that because he’s a sweetheart, but I can picture him doing it. I want to point out that a lot of people did not think Tom’s dad was his bad, and I’m probably a selection bias because I’m talking about those who thrived in the system. But people like Hardy Stauch, you know, said they loved it. They learned from it. They even look forward to it. And it’s like, you know, he’s like, if other people can’t. So there was no mystery. He said, Yeah, you had to go with it with a plan and a plan B.. So he did. For every person that you would say was a loser. There was a winner, somebody who was more capable, more forward looking or innovative. Whatever was able to assume that position and get promoted and bring more good things to happen. So yeah, it might have been a little rough and tumble, but you had people like Stauch Esposito and stuff like that.

[00:44:02] These guys, they just boom. Yeah, but but on the other side of it, it’s like, you know, people who couldn’t see how to play this and there was a way to play it, you know, like somebody from the from the one to try and stand our ground, God’s country comes in the prison command and goes, Well, you know, I we had three robberies last week. So what is Lois say? Tell me about them. Tell me about each one. It’s like, is it a free ride? Was it? You don’t know every detail about it. So it wasn’t just, you know, OK, I brought crime down. It’s like, are you thinking of doing things? And the other thing is, a lot of this led to excesses that, oh, you know, so these gentleman’s unsuccessful and then people again would squeeze the life out of number one somewhere in Brooklyn, I could have been a seventh reason. One of them. Like, there’s a lot of crime being committed by kids on bikes. So this is OK. We’re going to force the bicycle laws, kids driving on the sidewalk. We were over 12 years of a life. You don’t have a pool and whatever, whatever bicycle shit you need. So OK. And all of a sudden a robbery starts to go down and there’s just there’s all of this stuff and how they’re not ripping off beds and knocking people off of it. Okay. You know, look good thinking, you know? So that, of course, is still a central park has to try that shit out and who they get. But the Times reporter cycling through the park, it’s like, Yeah, you know, you don’t need to do that here. You need to think about something else. You know, you need to customize a little bit.

[00:45:35] Yes. It was the 77th Precinct by the evening and it was somewhere over Nostrum Avenue a couple of blocks away. Eastern Parkway. My yeah, my apologies to the seven seven. That’s that’s that’s an on talking about it. That same same story. The chief wants bicycle summonses. No, I didn’t. Chief wants less robberies. He doesn’t care about my if bicycle summonses achieves that goal. That’s good. But if you’re on a bicycle summonses as a priority instead of the wall one and turn the key in the lock and we all go home right now. So when was the first one to go back to? I was jokingly and perhaps too dismissive of the tech savvy here involved because the concept was simple. But but what’s your computer background job? Zero. I am a self-taught accounts. I and I like tinkering. And initially, when I was in the seventh grade, I set up at the time of a BBC, a bulletin board system. I guess it would be, you know, kind of like these different social media sites and stuff that you have nowadays. I called it Ford Z for descendant of which was the nickname of the 7th Street Precinct. And if you didn’t have real computers at the time, so I had to run it on a five and a quarter inch floppy. And then I sent off to China for a three and a half inch and a special ribbon to connect them and wrote a whole bunch of at the time it was all dos batch files to flip back and forth because one disk couldn’t contain enough information to actually load the beeps and then an election log on and do what you wanted to do. And then it grew a little bit from there where I was able to add 500 Meg hard drive or five Meg hard drive.

[00:47:36] I think it was, yeah, yeah, five minutes. And then I got an eight, a 286 computer and eventually got all the way up to a 386 ASX. So but I just taught myself and then when we were doing a thing up in Comstat again, what do I know? I meant I managed to get a manual for Fox Pro. And I read it, and when I had to do functions and things like, you know, time in between this state and I think you go to the back at a book, there’s the indexes, says date page 289, page 289 that that did that. And then when I would get stuck, I used to go downstairs and plead with this fellow Steve Edgar, who was a first grade detective and the chief of detectives office, who was extremely talented in that and quite the crime fighter himself. And eventually, we actually considered we trophy begged him to come up to the chief department’s office eventually. And Steve was a tremendous help with that because he used to code professionally, in fact, and helped us out. But other than that, there was no training the maps. I knew there was mapping stuff, but what do I know of? They had a meeting. We got map info because the department owned a couple of copies, OK, here’s the bullet. What happened was, is that Jack and I and this was 94, went to D.C. There’s a conference in D.C., a crime mapping conference. And I think what happened is there was somebody of authority D.C. that basically went to the FBI says, OK, let’s check this a room and show me where all the crime is. And there was no such beast. So now we have a national crime mapping thing, and Chicago had done some.

[00:49:25] And it was based on was I was an auto theft grant they had. So they decided to map a whole bunch of crimes. And there was a whole bunch of other, you know, had the little things Scarlett and Jack sides to me and says, we have to come back next year and we’re going to show them how it’s done. And that was Ranch’s devils. The game with Stefan Richard won it in overtime, so it might have been a second game of that series in 94. So you want to get down to the day there was something you really drill it down. It’s not that anybody sent anybody to school to learn how to do this, though. Oh, come on the program. It is the Boy Scouts lawyer. Yeah. This is the book. Mm hmm. OK, good. So anybody even just getting stuff? So you got a little laptop hooked up to a projector at the time? You know, we we actually brought the big old CRT monitors down and stock them on desks and rolled a computer box down, stuck it on and. They had to look at it like that. Then they have a. What program are you actually displaying things on in the meetings? Well, before we have, we didn’t have maps at first, so we were just showing a bunch of bar graphs and stuff like that. All the graphics? Yeah. And then we went once we got the maps. The first day I did a Berkeley map and we brought it in and they walked in the door, and it’s still one of these CEOs, walks in and looks up, sees all these blue dots up on a wall goes, Oh my God, they got that too. And it just it went from there to eventually where we got the whole dedicated room up there and the south, the Jack Maple Climate Control Center on the eighth floor with multiple monitors, big projection monitors, screen projection screens, all sorts of nifty stuff, but we started by just pushing.

[00:51:24] Computer on a chair entry into the room, and they had a look at it and when when Maple or Adam Bratton had all these meetings or as most of them, most of the beginning, yes, when we were down until he was in, it was pretty. He was pretty much at all of them. And I wanted this thought started a less and less than Jack. In the end, Louis would take over, and then it’s Norris step coming. That’s that, and that’s well down the line. But yeah, but Jack, but Brendan talk. I didn’t question why he just watched, you know, mostly watch Louis and and and Jack to with. And when they say, you know, pull up robberies and whatever the the one 12 who’s actually pressing the button. John, you did it, but you better be doing it fast because then they started pushing you people and they started going, you know? So OK, let’s see. So then, you know, Billy and I knew because, you know, these guys had a lot of things to do besides just this stuff. So we would sit there and we’re dealing with this all day. So not that we would direct the meeting, but we knew where the issues were and we used to sit down and have briefings with the chief and maple prior to the meetings. And then what would happen is I might maybe bring up the rubbish, but I knew there was a situation. So I had already moved to the next part and Zoom, so that would be ready for them and they’d look up and say, Yeah, that’s what we talked about last night. And then they go right after the guy and it was the worst on Monday. And then Tuesday, you know, Tuesday we get started to the books ready or we print the books and Louis would always come around the door is a coin.

[00:53:06] Yes. And then we will sit down Tuesday afternoon with Laurie and go, All right, what do you got? It’s like nine holes and then who’s coming this week? So we point out the highs and lows you point out who’s come in this week with this stories? And it’s like, we’re ready to go tomorrow. And then, you know, we used to try to. Not every week, but as often as possible give them like little Easter eggs, you know? And so what can we add to the report this week? Or what good can we give you that next week? Keep you happy? Another way to look at this graph? You know, let’s let’s find a way to, you know, to glean something that it’s going to look like personal opinion. Everybody has their own little like. Mortgages where concept really went off the charts, but to me, the when it kicked into really high gear was when we did these what we called a price. We had gotten the arrest numbers and put them on record, we’ll look in your own eye and work, like I said, two seven, three to seven five me saying that, you know, they’re doing twenty five arrests over the week and stuff. So I said, let me see something here. So I got the arrest numbers from the three because I know what I’m talking a billion. I’m saying not for nothing, but look at all these guys for the list. This was September, OK? Four last year it was August or August we came out with. The thing in September was, you know, it was July. It was up to July and August we were playing with the numbers. These people, they got no rest for the whole year. This is the seventh three precinct people literally throwing themselves on the one of the car, saying Take me to jail.

[00:54:37] It would take the amount of effort required to have no arrests unless you were inside in a body brace was tremendous. So we said, Look, let’s see. So we went and got a dump of the mainframe at a whole city. Everybody didn’t matter what command. If you were in any sort of enforcement command right from the the seven three precinct, right on up to the Warren unit, detective units, investigative units, everything. And we made these pie charts and it showed zero arrests, one arrest, two or three, whatever the breakdown was, you know, four to six, 10 plus and then to the back. We attach the printout of the names of the all the assigned personnel in the wood in decreasing order with how many arrests they’ve made so far. And they filled up a couple of boxes stuff. Hey, Jack, look what we got for you. Well, it’s thought it was. It was. An old saw on a police department was 10 percent of the cops make 90 percent of the cows. So he says, let’s test the hypothesis. And it turned out that twenty three percent of the cops made sixty eight percent of the collar or something like that, thus proving the hypothesis. But also the 27 percent of the cops assigned to enforcement commands in seven months of 1994 had zero arrest. Twenty seven percent had no arrests. Now some guys are, you know, some guys are lame to man. Some guys are, you know, their in-house pesticide guys, some guys, White House and things like that. So, OK, obviously they don’t count. But even if you take on a true fact or people that you don’t want, don’t want, they’re not going to make arrests. That’s a lot of arrest if you’re not making those once command like this subject.

[00:56:22] So this the one 11, so something that’s okay and the numbers look good and it’s like, OK, so how come 50 percent of 60 percent of the cops don’t have a power supply issue? It goes that number can’t be right. And it’s like here. Yeah, take a look at that. It’s like to quote, John Yo, you probably have to take some of these guys out there by hand and say, You see the guy, they’re the one throwing a rock through the window. Go with them. Yeah, they did. They did it with him. But that really turned things around. And the idea was, you don’t know nothin a flake somebody or a lock somebody up for throwing their gum wrapper on the sidewalk. Go find somebody who did something bad. There’s plenty of them and lock them up. What the fuck you don’t want all day? What does flake mean of not a legitimate arrest? You know, plant evidence. I killed the Dalila a little bit of the circle stage. So not just a bullshit minor arrest, but actually being less than truthful in your explanation of the circumstance. Yeah, no. Floyd Flake is bad. Yeah. Well, I don’t know that this is why I ask. No, no, no. Everything. Everything. Again, no sharp pencils. Everything above board. People have rights to citizens. They’re not our enemies. The 99 percent of these people are good people, and they need us to come between them and the animals who would eat them alive. And you have to do that with respect. And we knew that even back in the what before all this, when I was on patrol with a seven three four seven foot, we used to tell a sergeant to stay back half the time on the Jimmy and I and we go on a job and then you’d walk in there and there’s a rookie.

[00:58:11] He’s just about to get in fisticuffs with somebody because the guy’s trying to put his 300 pound TV in the back of the car and he’s yelling for double parking his home. You know, we’ll take care of it. If you don’t go into a man’s house on a dispute or something and embarrass him in front of his family and expect him to peacefully submit to arrest you, go in there and you treat him with dignity and respect. And 99 percent of those people will turn around and put their hands behind their back because they were treated fairly. Not only sound misogynistic, but who like a bit with respect, and they leave that way. And you didn’t have to go in there swinging away and calling for your deal life. Sometimes you did. Some people just. But that if you can eliminate 90 percent of the problem, problematic use of force, rest, you’ve done your job and then but you treat people decently and that that included you don’t fight people, you don’t make stuff up. You don’t exaggerate. And no zero collar is the one of those guys with no conflicts. We’re not talking about robbery. Kyle is a gun, Kyle. So when I say, you know, shoplifting at the Grand Union, we know that tense, you know, as securities holding one at the MP, give it a hand and them to you like literally. And it’s freezing outside. And I go to the station house for a couple of hours with this guy. He’s my best friend. He’s not, he’s not my enemy. Mean, come on. You know, I do remember I do that every day, but people curious to know what the numbers are now. Well, yeah, arrest, I mean, arrests. You know, there’s one third, the number of arrests that there used to be.

[00:59:51] No, you’re not indemnified the people you lock up, don’t get no bail. It’s a very dangerous situation for your personal life to go out on that limb when you know the guy is going to be on the street before the end of your shift. And, you know, if they don’t pay it. Yeah, no. Yeah, no. I mean, that’s just the crime prosecutor. But you know, it’s you know, I’m glad I’m out, so I’m going to jump ahead, though I don’t want mean any. You can still go on with anything here, but let’s let’s. What year was that? When, like when Al Gore plays a visit to the CompStat is also leaving aside the story or about this this he’s holding up a placard that Al Gore of my demise, one of the things you might have around the table to tell somebody where to sit. Yeah. Well, certain people can sit on certain parts of that sign in certain directions if it up to me before before you go on. I want to mention, and I think a lot because people often dismiss the accomplishments of the of the crime drop in New York and and they say, well, crime went down everywhere, which is true. But I would say it started in New York, but I don’t think people realize how this wasn’t rocket science. I mean, we’re saying we’re going to care about crime. It’s like we’re going to hold police accountable for what’s going on. It spread very quickly. There were there were eight teams that would, you know, go voluntarily and for money to spread. The news here was on the cover of magazines and people came in. You can implement this philosophy almost instantaneously in another city. But it had from from admirals to to like representatives.

[01:01:40] The Queen of Sweden, you name it. They were the everybody came in. At the end of the day, it’s just accountability. You know, it’s it’s no the same way. Referring to it is what gets inspected. Gets respect. This is this is it. I’m calling you an honest guy to do something about it. I’m going to ask you what you did about this. If you want a corporation and you had a board meeting and you got a division that’s losing $100 million every quarter, you might ask him some questions. I show you one of the Innovations in Government award. Don’t know what year, but sometime around, then right around then 96. This story. So, so, so Al Gore is coming over to take, take, take it over, if you would, how what Al Gore is coming to Comstat. So Al Al Gore is coming to want to see this thing now when the VP come does anything, everything scripted. Nothing is left to chance. I’m on the phone with the Secret Service multiple times. Vice president is going to ask this. You’re going to answer that. Yes. OK. The vice president’s going to sit here. They put these little signs like I just showed you in front of the seats and we had some of those small monitors their space around. So there was the sign for Al Gore. There was a sign for Rudy Giuliani, et cetera, et cetera, through the thing. How would you say at the time? Yes. And how would you? Is the police commissioner, police commissioner at the time and so on. So Giuliani had gotten in a pissing match with the White House at the time because they were going to present this hammer reward or whatever it was. And Rudy felt that it shouldn’t go to the police department, they should go to him.

[01:03:37] So if he wasn’t going to get it, nobody was going to get. They got in a big discussion because it’s good I’m not coming anyhow, to make a long story short, they compromise on the whole thing and like nobody was in the game and I was just going to watch to me. So now Rudy comes in prior to the meeting. He walks over and he sees there’s the monitor. There’s this sign that I just showed you for Al Gore, vice president and then his son, huh? Nah, he switches the two so that he’s closer to the monitor than the vice president. Not a meeting’s about to start, in comes the vice president, Secret Service, they walk over, they something right in front of the sign that says the honorable Rudy Giuliani, because they count the chairs, they know where the vice president is going to sit. They do not want him sitting on a bomb. So. He goes looking. And he finally goes like this to, you know, to the exam, whatever. And he says so he sits down and he put his son, so things were off to a flying start. As the meeting goes on, we’re up there, we’re pushing the buttons, doing what he asks something I don’t even remember what the question was, who was the one I was supposed to answer and safer? Got up and said something to me all. Literally all I heard it was like the teacher on peanuts. Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah. OK, he’s done. He sits down. Now I’ve got 200 people turn around and look at me because it’s all spit, so I give my answer. Mr. Vice President, thank you very much. I sit them. I go home now I was home with back surgery from my car crash back in the day, they had to take the do a lemon to me on me, so I’m out.

[01:05:24] They had driven me in for this meeting or lame up. So I go back home the next morning, the phone rings and it’s chief families lose on the phone and goes, Hey John, how are you doing? Good boss, what’s up? He goes, well, I got good news and bad news. Oh, what’s the good news? Because it’s a beautiful day outside. She lets the bad news. Well, you’re safe, a blue, a gut. You know, you answered the question, but then you embarrassed the police commissioner. You’ve been banished from Manhattan. They’ve posted angels with the fiery swords that holds the bridge entrances. And I was not to come back in. All right. This sucks, OK, boss. So I said, you know, I tell you what. Could send me back to the three. I like it there. What are seven five? These are my people, I there’s somebody me back there. Well, that was the first one, they these guys were vicious. They denied me going back. I’m probably the only person in the history of NYPD who has refused to transfer into the worst precinct to the city into the seven three two seven five. No, we’re not letting him go because he wants to go there. So they sent me off to the borough in Queens. So luckily that was when I first got there. There was an animal, an ally who was to the the borough commander. He says, don’t worry, we’ll take. We take care of our own. All right. You know, this is after I come off the sick. Then they had called me and I had Mike Daley and other people call me from the newspapers, want to do stories on how this whole thing went down, and they brought me in the back.

[01:07:06] And basically, he told me, these people are savages. Your brother is still on the job. The passage, but they don’t take them hostage, just zip the lip, go away, quiet, and that’s it. OK, fine. So I mean, this is mob shit you’re talking about. Damn right, it is. They’re saying, if you don’t play our game, we’re going to hurt your family. Yes. Yeah, they do. They probably transfer at a Bronx to something that a lot of people had no hot men. So they send me off to queens. I’m sitting there. I got nothing to do. I got no desk. They sent me down the basement room with no windows. I’m watching Jerry Springer all day. So finally, the borough commander who was in one of the next one says, What are you going to do? Yo, what are you doing for me? I said, with all due respect, chief, what do you want me to feel? I have no debt. I come in at seven o’clock. I said, this guy. He comes in at 8:00 a.m. for the next year. The other guy comes in at 9:00. I go down, I sit downstairs like, What do you want me to do? Are you getting off the job soon? I hope so. OK, good. So I said to hell with this, I papers in. I was approved by the medical board. There’s a two step process to get one to do the injury. First, you have to go to the medical board and they torment you. And they examine you. And these three doctors come to a consensus on whether your injuries line of duty related or not. If you get to the medical board, you’ll go. You got you three quarters line of duty, tax free forever.

[01:08:36] Sometimes people get denied by the medical board, and this is a second. What made up of half sitting and half parliament people that reviews it and sometimes people get denied by the medical board and the other bit that the city board will step in and override it and give you two or three quarters anyhow, you know, oh, chief this or inspector that now he’s deaf because somebody didn’t have his ear muffs on right at the range, you know, and they give him the thing. Me, I go down to sign out on my allotted day and the paperwork. And I have a copy in here I won’t hold you up was I have to dig it out, but I have the original copy and it’s stamped accident in red because the medical board approved me for the pension. The three quarters pension. The girl looks at me and she goes, Sarge, I never seen anything like this before, I don’t know to tell you. On top of Red Accident is a bunch of white out and then it’s over stamped in blue ordinary, which means I hurt myself on my own time. It’s a half. Then you got to pay tax. A similar. Rudy had the safest Debord step in, as did last pound of flesh, because they just had to keep taking it and override the medical board and deny my three quarters. And they wanted me to submit documentation that I did not enjoy myself elsewhere. I had the best lawyer in the city, Rosemary Carol, and she told me, basically, I can’t keep taking your money. The fix is in. You can’t get a letter from every doctor in the country. So at that point, I just how did they hear, I said, how would I don’t care? I signed out, I went and I hooked back up with Jack and and we took the show on the road doing consulting.

[01:10:22] But that is a huge difference. Forever. So no good deed goes unpunished. I’m basically in the hole, probably about $1.2 million already. And. But I don’t have the tape. Well, it’s a sad story, too, given I have done that year end up being struck by City Hall and deserve no better, but at least you seem. I mean, you seem happy and life. At least we did the right thing. You can’t put a price on trans world history. Yup. They’re going to build statues to you, Jack said, how come I don’t see those statues, though? Well, like Jack, said, Johnny, one day they’re going to build statues to us and the children will sing our praises and the pigeons will crap upon our head. And it’s the truth will get in the crap before the singing. But you know, really? What are your lessons from all of this? And you’ve been getting a on time, though, now anyway. Yeah, I mean, I’m I’m twenty to twenty two years. I mean, you know, but you know, to me, I had aspirations. I was going to go work my way up to become the chief of patrol, the chief of department. Of course it’s an idiot. I was an idiot because, you know, you know, I like to shoot my mouth off, you know, I’m a bit of a misfit, so it was never going to work out. I got to 20 and that’s I did 20 years in two days, and the two days were an accident wasn’t my fault, you know? But it’s like, you know, I’m done. You know, it’s like, you know, the you know, the more you have to confront this when you you’re on your own, the radio car is a cop with your partner.

[01:12:01] You know, it pays off because you want to, you know, so long as they are entering your jobs and compliant with the law and all. But then I want to get more and more in there and more and more, you know, you know, doctrinaire. It’s just like, yeah, no more, no more fun, no more or anything. It’s all politics, and I’m a great political analyst. You know, you want me whispering, you hear, but you don’t want me. You don’t want me to be your candidate. If you want my candidate, you’re going to do all right, but you don’t want me to be a candidate. So some time ago, just last night, I was going over an interview that I didn’t conduct is also passed away from Timony. That was there’s John J’s library. How Marissa’s becoming captain was an odd event because suddenly you you can’t be yourself anymore and you have to. Now you’re you have to follow the orders from headquarters and City Hall. And he said it was a whole different political game. You go from the I had the money is a loser. I had a special assignment money, so I went from being the top of the bottom to be in the bottom of the top. And if I had to do over again, I’d sell my fucking hand off. I took the captain’s test. Yeah. You’re saying I was making top lieutenants, but you making top cap this pay with the rank like we had that we had the stars at the time. So yeah, I’ll say, you know what? You know, so it was and my time was up and I had other interests and that’s not, you know? You know, because I know, I know I going to do, and that’s why I went to journalism school.

[01:13:30] This is I’m going to need another job. This is not going to last forever. Yeah. Are luckily, you know, Jack, I went right back with Jack, so it wasn’t like I was destitute or anything. But you know that that kind of business has its ups and downs. John with John, Linda and Linda. We haven’t mentioned doing all this, but who also played a big role. More fluffy. But he would come up with these little booklets and things like that for crime, for whatever they called and build a little booklets out goals and stuff. But I hooked back up with these guys and then we went and we took the show on the road, also in Paris. And yeah, we don’t talk enough about it with the constant revolution. Also came all the re-engineer, and it’s another way brand got everybody on board, you know? You know, Linda was supposed to be making a thousand dollars a day and it made they separated. I made ten twelve groups of people like no supervisory. You know, it’s about this. I did. People all look to training. People looked at this level and you said you talked about it. It was cops and chiefs and outsiders department and compiled some reports and made recommendations. And again, it wasn’t even so much that the recommendations were good or fully acted upon. It’s that people would think. And again, people are talking about again, why do we do this? Can we do this another way? Is there a simpler way to do this? Is, you know, so or perhaps it’s all too simple. We’re not thinking, you know? And that’s about it. So that idea as as that developed tool, that’s what it was all part of the burgeoning. And of course, I wrote that report and I wrote the supervisory report.

[01:15:14] So it’s like, you know, you just kept your agency just kept growing and growing and growing there. Yeah. Like, you know, Jack and Louis, when the crime in Jutland was what these focus groups of these, but it all was all different things like Billy said, it was all it did was get people focused on the issues and looking for alternatives and look at trying to expand their horizons to get out of that mindset, that cage that they had been in for the last 20 years. And the pressure commander report cards that we did, you know, I mean, we took a look at all the stuff in and appreciate, you know, all of the important stats, you know, arrests, but for their little picture there. I love little color pictures. But, you know, sit on Line of duty, sit time because then it was still an indicator of morale. You know, Greg, it’s banged up on a job here tomorrow. Guys gets banged up and the morale is bad. Bruised, just fucking. I’m taking a week. So all of these little things and again, we were all thinking about and not only like, what do the numbers say, but what else could go in the report going report? What gives you a fuller idea of what’s going on here, both in the precinct and had the commanders or the Steelers are antioxidants? Yeah, CCR big complaints, you know, and we just keep an extra one or two in there every other week. And yeah, it’s pretty pretty squeezed in there, you know? But yeah, but there was a time when against innovation, it was great. You were actually doing something, you know, have have day all that same old every day, everyday go on. Let’s go to coffee.

[01:16:59] And you know, all the inside jobs on the radio, go home, you know? Hey, let’s try this new sandwich shop. I hear good things. This is like, you know, there were actually, as I say, change world history. Mm hmm. All right. Oh, I just looked at the license plate there, if you would just oh, most people who are listening this John is getting a license plate and it says New York State, the Empire State and the license plate is CompStat. That was my that was my plate. That’s why you can’t get it. Damn it. Although I’m more looking around, totally got the one from the president’s award that gave to the innovation government is a big, big glass cube and. Everybody then mother came with stuff, I got them all over my desk, this is from the Israel Israeli Police, a little pyramid with a glass pyramid with a globe in it. Yeah, all sorts of all sorts of stuff. They came from everywhere. Can you, for the record, give the origin story of the name and settle this issue once and for all? Yeah, I don’t. I wasn’t. We were sitting there. Like I said, I wrote the thing. Everything was dos at the time, and it was 8.3 naming convention. That was how you had a name files. So I had to call it something and we had it in small. It was basically a big old batch file. That smart way let you compile into an executive or file a dot com or dot XFL anyway, and it was dot com background. You’re not crazy. Yeah, we compile it. So there was a bunch of us sitting around in the office. Some of my staff, myself and I’ll mention them, in particular Richard Mahere.

[01:18:46] He was another detective that was up there, were bouncing around these names and somebody throwing out this name. I’m saying that. And Ritchie said, How about, you know, because we’re saying we got comparative statistics. So do we want, you know, stats for precinct weekly? You’re trying to work all of this stuff into some sort of recognizable yellow character thing? Yeah. So Ritchie says, how about CompStat? Computerized comparative statistics that works. Yeah. Was comparative statistics, and I think it says on the report, which is computerized in comparative statistics. And they also include on the front to satisfy older people. This report is preliminary and subject to change and revision because otherwise they just wouldn’t go in it if we didn’t put that in. Because one percent of cases might get reclassified to zero. And that’s all you know. You know, those who gave us the right numbers. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, sure, there’s always going to be classifications, their own incentive to go out. And it really wasn’t what you thought it was. OK, we reclassified this the with that saying, like, you had gene weights that they call the hospitals every morning to find out that either shooting victim dropped dead overnight, you know? Yeah. Well, and that was also weird because, you know, the homicide count is like it is the day they say they died, the day the M.E. declared, because they get shot, you know, and when did it? When and what is the authority that did dead? So there was like something to say, is it Tuesday or was it Wednesday or does it this week or was it last week? And all of a sudden, you know, guys start to again? So I don’t want that homicide this week.

[01:20:34] So what was it shot 10 years ago? And that made the brain move that the bullet got lodged your brain and moved a quarter of a millimeter and you’ve died? So what? How does that? How did you categorize that? And then what? I can’t remember. I just remember it was an issue of defense. You know, pretty sure it got how to get classified under the initial date of occurrence. That’s the FBI Way. Yeah, we got to go with UCR, OK? You know, and but most of the time is what has happened within the same calendar year. Didn’t matter was when you moved outside that calendar year that they would have a problem. When did I’ve already asked you this, Billy Joe? When did you know John? When did you know this was working? Because no one expected this to see it working almost immediately, probably within the first few weeks. It was little things, but to me that absolute click point was when we came out with those arrests, the pies, everything just sort of just went just steep declines because we have to remember. And that was that was August. I’m getting calls about it when I was saying, well, my my kid was being born, my baby was being born. So that was August 19, 1994, and it was in the newspaper. I was getting calls about that. The newspaper wanted to know about it. So yes, and one of the many of the frustrating things I find about most people’s analysis of crime and the crime drop is, you know, let’s talk about LED being phased out in the 70s. And they like, No, I mean, you can give specific months and a specific year. This wasn’t something in the air. It was you were either the luckiest by, you know, fluke of coincidence or things actually mattered.

[01:22:15] Right? Well, these are the same people who will say anything just because they want to say they don’t want to give the police credit for anything. People who are there are a lot of academics would awfully hard starting with the real sorry, but they’re idiots, OK? Honest to God. Sorry, they’re idiots. My sister sent me a text a week or two ago and said, Oh my god, look, we found you on Netflix. It was like 10 second clip of us in a meeting. I forget the name of the thing it what’s what’s the name of the thing? I want to see it? Well, basically what the what the show was about? Look, I’m well, I get the name of the show. It showed that, but they basically came to the conclusion that CompStat didn’t have anything to do with this. The crime was going down anyhow across the board. Crime had started going down and it was it was just B.S. Someone explain an acceleration to me, someone to explain to me how that happened. You know, they had clients going down and mixing it with the crimes at the bottom of a fucking ravine. Tell me how that acceleration happened. Yeah. And the idea that it was already going on is decreasing is factually true, but sort of misses the big point, which is the failings of the fucking building. Well, but it was a lot quieter. It was still going on around 100000 homicide, 110 homicides, a hundred thousand robs 100000 auto deaths. And all of a sudden there were all of a sudden it’s like guns, and it’s just really down the street. So somebody explain this to me. There it is. Freakonomics. Oh yeah, Freakonomics. I was in that book and Freakonomics.

[01:24:04] Stephen Dubner was the guy who was the writer of this thing. But, you know, of course, the whole thing about, you know, abortions and all of that, you know, someone was an academic from England said, you know, check the high school age, you know, your your main perp age and high school drama was was the same, you know, over over the course of time, it wasn’t like all of a sudden there were no children. All of a sudden there were no perp age children. It was, it was, you know, also in the 90s. And it’s been discredited. Also, by the way, yeah, and abortion was already legal in New York. Well, before that, any what to give credit, where credit was due, even New York and it was Jack Maple who said, You know, how many shootings did we have last year and that year it was probably four or five thousand or something like the 35000 cops. I like those odds. It’s not like they’re thirty five thousand shooters and two thousand cops. But the funny thing is is when Jack said how much insurance was there last year, we didn’t know we hadn’t recorded it nowhere. No, thanks because you had it. As you know, if I shot at you and I hit you, it’s either attempted murder or so. And if I shot you and Mr. to reckless endangerment or whatever, you know, so, you know, shooting incidents and shooting victims. Question was a shooting victims. All right, we can do that. Then it’s like, Well, how many incidents? How many is it going to look like multiple shootings? And we wound up defining what a shooting was shooting it since its initial in the city, which is bullet fired and criminal man a piece of human flesh.

[01:25:40] All right. One time a guy that robbed and got shot, but he had a bulletproof vest on. OK. We could count that one, but there was one exception that I know. But we want much to discredit. In 1994, we did not count how many shootings and how many shooting victims we had. And Jack Maple hope and justice and justice. That’s still a question. We don’t have an answer. No, we got one quick. When I was doing a consultant, I went to Atlanta. I went to Atlanta with John Lin. I did an audit of Atlanta, the crime reporting, and when they were trying to get the Olympics, they had perfected sickening crime. So an audit police check county making things go away, towed it into the garbage. They had file cabinet with a drawer. You don’t put a drawer. There was a stack of rape reports. She said. One of these in here for an encounter. Well, no, they don’t call back. We don’t count. Oh. Bullets fired through the window in a house. No, that’s not that’s criminal mischief to the window. No, it’s not. They didn’t and there was it ended up well, we got done. They were going down with about 50 percent of their crime, making it just disappear. It’s a tough game to play because you got to keep that up every year. I mean, it’s it’s a great don’t really have to keep it up as long as I don’t have to keep it up until I get promoted to retire. I keep it up forever, and it’s the next idiot’s problem. Hey, Billy, how do you define an oak leaf? I got a quote of you saying in that context, I get my Oakley and I cut it because I can’t.

[01:27:22] I know what it means, but I don’t know how to write it. Now you get promoted so well from Captain, you know, it’s the next rank up, so you know, you have the insignia. I guess a major, but it’s a PR, it’s high. But what it is, is, is it’s the above captain. Everything is discretionary. So you captain. I guarantee that promotion to captain unless you know you’ve committed a crime. If you pass the test, you’ll get promoted after. That’s all discretionary. It’s all politics, which is a lot of the reason why I never became one. Or, you know, so but that’s you got to play the game. So that’s what you get at Rockliffe and you’re out of here. And that’s the game, you know, it’s like, OK, I got promoted. Now I’m going to a different precinct. And you know, this portion of now gets gets the whoever’s replacing me, he gets handed this this festering pile of shit. And not just about dude. How often do people get demoted at that level? You were just transferred? Almost never. No, not really. But back then when we thought when when we first started, it wasn’t so much the motions, they would all be heading for the pension section because they tended to be older, you know. And yeah, when you get your time, it’s like you’re going to go because you got that there’s nothing here for you. Some were going to go. So we remember. Again, I don’t have the names because, you know, these are all respectable people, a lot of work to get their rank somewhere along the line. But we had two of them up there, chiefs who really didn’t like each other and we banished Louis, banished them tourists to the same unit where they would literally fight over who got the morning paper.

[01:29:05] And they had, but they had nothing to do. The unit had no function and they just left them there until they decided, Okay, enough, I got to. Remember that all of that’s a load of fun stuff off and the other one. But, you know, there was another guy, you know, he sort the chair not at low, but he got up and picked this chair because, you know. And then similarly with the, you know, that’s bullshit, Lowy, you know, we so I guess Louis, you I saw that in the not to give anything away on your forthcoming novel, but the the Pinocchio incident sometime you think Pinocchio incident, but that’s been written about. But please. But how about from your perspective? Everyone talks about it, and it was just I feel a little guilty highlighting it because it was just my perspective was probably the least perspective you wouldn’t want to have because it was the worst. OK, I’m the police sergeant, OK? And I come in with a scan of my kids video VCR parts of Pinocchio, and they just thought it was the best thing. So they said, OK, when we give you the high sign, you put it up. Well, up close Pinocchio on Simonetti. Disrespect all. They went from Brattan, they yelled Extreme. They all had apologies to whatever me, I had to do physical penance. And they make me go out to Staten Island and tutor some of these people. And, you know, over and over again, I’m so sorry, chief. I’m so sorry, chief. Anything bad by a chief of sorts. I’ve made a couple of make up and then go out there and tutor his people on Comstat to pay off my debt. You hey, listen, you know, at least at least all is forgiven because, you know, if Louis killed overnight, that was the other thing the tightrope you’re on.

[01:31:02] So what? We inject keel over and die. I mean, we’re just out there. Yeah, eventually that’s what happened to me. But I survived. I survived on charm and ben and report ratings. And if I’m surviving on this, there’s problems. But you know, it’s, you know, you’re worried about Jesus. If he holds these guys who comes the hives are coming out. They were. Yeah, were you a dead man walking? We knew it. We know. And I’m just doing what we’re doing with the devil. So what? What’s the going to do to me? Torment me, sell me through a toll. You know, we found out what the worst thing was anyway. Yeah, right, exactly. So, you know, it didn’t matter of getting in any, you know? And as I’ve said before, I believe on the last podcast or in the book, it’s Hey, don’t leave me before I need that, you could send me away and banish me. You are going to need me. You don’t need me to write something for you. Yeah, anyone describes the Pinocchio incident. He said It is not one of my most endearing memories. So all these holes are top of the, you know, just a police department hierarchy. Here you have two old school Italians. Yeah. Respect. Not good. You know it’s OK. Thanks for listening, everybody. This is Peter Moskos. This has been quality policing with two quality guys John Yohe and William Gorta, the two geniuses behind Comstat. Thanks for listening.