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Since returning as commissioner of the New York Police Department, William J. Bratton has
been generous in thanking those who helped him get here: the mayor, Bill de Blasio, for the
job; his wife, Rikki Klieman, for her support; even a children’s book, for igniting his boyhood
fascination with the police.
And for just about everything else, Sir Robert Peel.
Throughout the department, the influence of Peel, a 19th-century British prime minister who
is considered the father of the London police force, is evident. Either in name or in the nine
basic policing principles commonly attributed to him, Peel is everywhere — on Mr. Bratton’s
lips, his official department blog, and even next to the place settings of breakfast events
where Mr. Bratton is the guest of honor.
In Peel, Mr. Bratton seems to have found a touchstone for nearly every occasion, a
visionary who “got it so right so long ago” and whose theory offers a kind of policing
originalism that floats above the particularities of each force he has commanded. What was
good for London in 1829, Mr. Bratton appears to suggest, remains just as good for officers
in modern-day New York.
“I’m privileged to be part of a long line of police leaders beginning with Sir Robert Peel,” Mr.
Bratton said in December, minutes after Mr. de Blasio had introduced him as the next police
commissioner. Taking out a folded piece of paper, Mr. Bratton began introducing New
Yorkers to the nine principles attributed to Peel. “I carry these with me everywhere,” he said.
“My bible.”
Peel’s principles define the basic mission of the police as prevention; success is gauged by
the absence of crime and disorder, rather than by the evidence of police action; force, Peel
wrote, was to be used only “when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found
to be insufficient.”
While Peel is a well-known figure among the police in Britain — it was his name that led
police officers to be called bobbies and peelers — Mr. Bratton’s tendency to quote Peel has
prompted blank stares in New York.
At a news conference in Brownsville, Brooklyn, about reforming the department’s stop-andfrisk practices, Mr. Bratton started right into a Peel quote with little explanation, as though
Peel were as familiar as Jefferson or Madison.
“I have heard the commissioner refer to him continually, which made me look him up,” the
Rev. Al Sharpton said.
“I would, though, warn him that Peel in England in the 1820s was not dealing with the
diversity that you find of 21st-century New York,” Mr. Sharpton added. “We are not in that
kind of world.”
But Mr. Bratton insists that the answer to many of the Police Department’s challenges lies in
“the Sir Robert Peel model.”
“Knowing who is in the community, who are the good people, who are the bad people, and
understanding the difference in how to interact with them — that’s the new challenge, the
new challenge that ironically was the same challenge that Sir Robert Peel faced over 150
years ago,” he said in a speech in January.
Peel received little mention during Mr. Bratton’s first stint as commissioner in New York
nearly 20 years ago, but as he entered the private sector and the speaking circuit, he began
dropping Peel’s name with increasing frequency. He mentioned Peel during his first few
years as police chief in Los Angeles, and often invoked the name in interviews with the
British press in 2011 while seeking, unsuccessfully, to lead the London police.
Mr. Bratton said his appreciation for Peel deepened after moving back to New York about
four years ago, and he began “paying more attention to the issues here in New York,”
particularly the controversy surrounding the department’s use of stop, question and frisk
tactics, which he called a cause of “alienation from the minority community.”
Mr. Bratton said he grew to be a disciple of Peel’s contributions to policing in the 1990s,
when his work led him to England for conferences and meetings.
“I give a lot of speeches and am always looking for source material,” said Mr. Bratton, who,
in 2009, was given the honorary title of commander of the Most Excellent Order of the
British Empire. “Those nine principles resonated with me. It matches up and aligns perfectly
with the community policing, which we were doing in the ’90s, and now the collaborative
policing we’re doing today.”
Mr. Bratton has often cited Peel to argue that the number of stop-and-frisk encounters were
too high for a city as safe as New York. At his swearing-in ceremony, Mr. Bratton declared,
“This ninth principle of the nine principles: The test of police efficiency is the absence of
crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.”
At other times, Mr. Bratton has tried Peel out as a shield when facing criticism over his own
use of aggressive policing tactics. “Stop, question and frisk has been around since Sir
Robert Peel,” he told reporters during the mayoral campaign, when Mr. de Blasio’s
opponents criticized Mr. Bratton’s earlier use of such tactics. “I guess you’d have to blame
Sir Robert Peel.”
An image of Peel’s face — cherubic cheeks, insouciant curls of hair framed by a high collar
— appears in Mr. Bratton’s first post on his blog and at events like the annual Police
Foundation breakfast at the Waldorf-Astoria, where Mr. Bratton spoke to guests who found
fliers with Peel’s principles at their tables.
His references to Peel and his methods contrast sharply with those of his predecessor,
Raymond W. Kelly, who took the gospel of New York exceptionalism seriously: Under him,
the Police Department was more interested in exporting ideas than importing them. Mr.
Kelly was fond of quoting Theodore Roosevelt, who was the New York police commissioner
before he became president.
There is some doubt among scholars that Peel actually enunciated any of his nine
principles himself. Some researchers say they were formulated in 1829 by the two first
commissioners of London’s Metropolitan Police Department, which Peel, then a member of
Parliament, played a leading role in creating.
In an interview, Mr. Bratton acknowledged that his Peel references did not always resonate
with an American audience — but that might change.
“I’m basically referencing him in just about everything I do, so perhaps he is acquiring new
relevance,” he said.
Principles for policing attributed to PeelPRINCIPLE 1 “The basic mission for which the
police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.”
PRINCIPLE 2 “The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public
approval of police actions.”
PRINCIPLE 3 “Police must secure the willing cooperation of the public in voluntary
observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.”
PRINCIPLE 4 “The degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured diminishes
proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.”
PRINCIPLE 5 “Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to the public opinion
but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.”
PRINCIPLE 6 “Police use physical fosasrce to the extent necessary to secure observance
of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is
found to be insufficient.”
PRINCIPLE 7 “Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives
reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the
police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties
which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
PRINCIPLE 8 “Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and
never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.”
PRINCIPLE 9 “The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the
visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.”