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Commissioner Bratton Orders NYPD Shakeup To Fine-Tune His Team

By Murray Weiss | July 30, 2015 7:53am
 Commissioner Bill Bratton said the new process will take a year. 
Commissioner Bill Bratton said the new process will take a year. 
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DNAinfo/Katie Honan

NEW YORK CITY — Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is ordering a shakeup of key commanders to put the finishing touches on his management team implementing his vision for the NYPD’s future, DNAinfo New York has learned.

The moves are largely the outgrowth of a decision to revamp the NYPD’s dysfunctional hiring system, which has been struggling to incorporate more African-American men onto the force.

They could be implemented as early as Thursday afternoon.

In recent months, it has become clear that the department’s recruitment and applicant procedures have routinely left tens of thousands of candidates languishing for an average of four years before they are contacted to join New York’s Finest.

Officials say the current system frustrates many of the most qualified recruits and forces them to ultimately look for, and accept, jobs elsewhere.

“We can’t have thousands of people in limbo for years . . . it’s ridiculous,” a high-ranking official said. 

“If people are dropping out because they are frustrated with the process then we are not doing it right.”

Deputy Commissioner Stephen Davis, the NYPD’s chief spokesman, confirmed the moves, but he described the changes as “more of a shape-up than a shakeup” — a final move involving management to carry out Bratton's pledge to fight crime and improve police-community relations.

“We are moving people so they are used in the best and most effective ways to accomplish the overall mission and goals,” Davis explained.

Topping the list of about a dozen moves will be Deputy Chief James Murtagh, who will be leaving the Police Commissioner’s office to work with Chief of Personnel Michael Julian as his office's commanding officer.

Julian previously helped re-design the department’s training programs in the wake of the death of Eric Garner and he is now tasked with streamlining the NYPD's applicant unit, which isn't even housed in a single place.

Deputy Chief Kim Royster, who presently serves as the commanding officer of Davis’s Office of Public Information, will also be joining Julian’s office as Chief of Staff with responsibilities over the recruitment makeover.

Sources say Royster, a decorated 28-year veteran who has served in precincts and in the Office of Management Analysis and Planning, is likely to be promoted shortly to Assistant Chief, which will make her the highest-ranking black woman in NYPD history.

Since taking office 18 months ago, Bratton vowed to study a police force he left 20 years ago when violence was starting to decline, and before counter-terrorism became a prominent NYPD mission following 9/11.

To that end, the commissioner enlisted private consultants and hundreds of officers to conduct focus groups and make recommendations to "re-engineer" the nation’s largest police force.

During two days this week, Bratton brought the people from the focus groups to Police Headquarters to thank them for making hundreds of recommendations, many of which he has embraced. 

“I intentionally set the bar high . . . you have far exceeded my expectations," Bratton told them. "We have laid the blueprints and foundation, (and) now it is time to execute our strategies and bring our intricate designs to fruition."

Earlier this month, the commissioner rolled out his long-awaited “Action Plan” for the NYPD, describing it as the 5-T’s: tactics, technology, training, terrorism and trust.

The "Action Plan" came on the heels of strategic changes that included: re-training the entire force in taking down suspects; dissolving “Operation Impact” with young officers assigned directly to precincts for neighborhood posting; shifting deployment of counter-terrorism officers; and fulfilling a personal mission to “de-centralize” the department’s "micro-management" structure.

The need to revamp recruitment systems emerged because the department continued to recruit a diverse group of potential candidates, but only 8 percent of them were African-American men, well below the city’s demographic.