About The Event

There is perhaps no greater authority on policing in America than Bill Bratton. But Bill Bratton is not only an expert on policing, he was also in the key position to assist in combating terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and subsequent terror threats in New York and Los Angeles.

Join The Common Good as Ken Auletta, best-selling author extraordinaire and famed columnist for The New Yorker, leads a conversation with Commissioner Bratton on Bratton’s new book, “The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America” as a jumping off point.

We’ll look at Bratton’s extraordinary career, how policing has changed (for good and bad) over the years, and get his thoughts on national security more generally. Bratton was known for improving community relations with the police and significantly reducing crime rates. How did he do it? Can we do it again? With crime rates rising, particularly violent crime, we need to know. Don’t miss this essential conversation.

During a 46-year career in law enforcement Bill Bratton, ever results-driven, instituted progressive change while leading six police departments, including seven years as Chief of the Boston and Los Angeles Police Departments and two nonconsecutive terms as the Police Commissioner of the City of New York. He is the only person ever to lead the police agencies of America’s two largest cities. In the words of our Honorary Advisory Board member and former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, Bill Bratton is “America’s police commissioner.”

Wednesday, July 28 from 5:00pm to 6:00pm ET

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Commissioner Bratton was the 42nd police commissioner of the City of New York from January 2014 to September 2016. It was the second time he had held the post. During that time, he oversaw 32 months of declining crime, including historic lows for murders and robberies. Commissioner Bratton spearheaded a major technological overhaul, the Mobile Digital Initiative, which gave a smartphone with custom-designed apps to every officer and put a tablet in every patrol car.

Commissioner Bratton also implemented major reforms to the NYPD’s counterterrorism program by developing two new units—the Critical Response Command (CRC) and the Strategic Response Group (SRG)—which now provide the city with more than 1,000 highly trained and properly equipped officers who are dedicated to counterterrorism, large-scale mobilizations, site security, and rapid deployment citywide.

In the 1990s, Commissioner Bratton established an international reputation for re-engineering police departments and fighting crime. As Chief of the New York City Transit Police, Boston Police Commissioner, and in his first term as New York City Police Commissioner, he revitalized morale and cut crime in all three posts, achieving the largest crime declines in New York City’s history. As Los Angeles Police Chief from 2002 to 2009, in a city known for its entrenched gang culture and youth violence, he brought crime to historically low levels, greatly improved race relations, and reached out to young people with a range of innovative police programs.

Ken Auletta is an acclaimed journalist who has been a pillar at The New Yorker magazine since 1992, writing columns under Annals of Communication and major pieces on a variety of major personalities and trends. Auletta has profiled the leading figures and companies of the Information Age, including Google, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, AOL Time Warner, John Malone, Harvey Weinstein, the New York Times, Sheryl Sandberg and Facebook; he has dissected media meteors that fell to earth, probed media violence, the political giving of communication giants, and explored what "synergy" may mean to journalism. His 2001 profile of Ted Turner won a National Magazine Award as the best profile of the year. He covered the Microsoft antitrust trial for the magazine. In ranking him as America's premier media critic, the Columbia Journalism Review concluded, "no other reporter has covered the new communications revolution as thoroughly as has Auletta." New York Magazine described him as the "media Boswell."

In addition to his fine reporting and writing at The New Yorker, Auletta is the author of twelve books, including five national bestsellers: Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed And Glory On Wall Street: The Fall of The House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Super Highway; World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies; and Googled, The End of the World As We Know It, which was published in November of 2009. His other books include: Backstory: Inside the Business of News; Media Man: Ted Turner’s Improbable Empire; The Streets Were Paved with Gold; and The Underclass. His twelfth book, Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (And Everything Else), was published in June 2018.

Be sure to check out Auletta’s 2015 article on Bratton entitled,“Fixing Broken Windows”