For the past few days I have been reading that current LAPD Comish and former NYPD Comish, William Bratton is coming back to the big mango. He’s coming to head up a private security firm but hasn’t ruled out retaking his old position running NY’s (a-hem) finest.

Now that former NYPD commissioner William Bratton is leaving his post as LAPD commissioner to be CEO of a NYC security company, there’s plenty of speculation that he could return to the public sector—even back as NYPD commissioner. Bratton told the Daily News, “Oh sure. I’m only 61. That’s a possibility down the line. Those that know me know I never close any doors. Well with some exceptions: I’ve closed the door on politics to show my sanity. I’m not crazy.”

Regardless of the capacity, Bratton’s return to NYC should capture everyone’s attention in the city, especially in the Latino community given the vicious police violence that the NYPD, under his hand, unleashed.

The loss that brought me personally into the anti-police brutality struggle as a teen, the death of Anthony Baez, happened under Bratton’s watch. From the NYT:

Mr. Baez, who lived in Orlando the last two years, was playing football with three of his brothers outside their family’s home in the University Heights section of the Bronx after 1 A.M. on Dec. 22, when their ball hit two patrol cars parked nearby.

Mr. Baez’s family and their lawyer, Susan Karten, said that after the ball hit the second car, one of the officers got out and attacked Mr. Baez, choking him to death.

Phil Caruso, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said yesterday that Mr. Baez died of an asthmatic attack that he suffered in a struggle with the police. He said that Mr. Baez and his brothers refused to stop playing after the officers told them they were disturbing the neighborhood and that Mr. Baez shoved one of the officers and then resisted arrest.

“He resisted violently when they attempted to put handcuffs on him,” Mr. Caruso ssid. “That’s when he had the asthmatic attack.”

And while through years of community struggle, including civil disobedience saw killer cop Francis Livoti go to prison (for violating Anthony’s civil rights), another execution of two Puerto Ricans by NYPD in the Bronx was portrayed by the media and the city as boys who had it coming. Again, it was the community, led by the mothers of the dead, who made sure that Anthony Rosario and Hilton Vega’s deaths were not forgotten. Don’t let Republicans let you think for a second that they started the movement to disrupt town hall meetings. It was the mothers of those executed by police who followed Bratton and then Mayor Giuliani around, even shutting down the lighting of the NY City Hall Christmas Tree.

Then NYPD head William Bratton called the grieving mothers and their supporters fools. These mothers included Milta Calderon, mother of 21 year old Anibal Carrasquillo, shot in the back by police because he looked “suspicious”. Lillian Flores mother of 15 year old Frankie Arzuaga shot point blank in the head by the NYPD as he sat in the back seat of a car.

Bratton was lauded for helping to create a safer NYC, even though crime stats across the country were going down, in large part due to the decline in use of crack cocaine. However his time in NYC was nothing less than a reign of terror for communities of color across the city and Bratton’s return reopens those wounds and he shouldn’t be allowed to forget it.

Via / Gothamist