"Our primary job is not to help anybody"

Bratton lasted only two years in his first term under Giuliani, who decided that New York City just wasn’t big enough for the two of them. Nevertheless, soon-to-be-mayor de Blasio is parading him around, gathering cautious endorsements from the more reform-minded critics of the previous policing regime. Bratton’s history does not suggest that zero-tolerance policing, quotas or racial profiling are likely to recede under his watch. It is unlikely that Bratton, considered by some (including his new boss) to be an innovator, will promote the creation of evaluation tools that consider officers’ assisting residents in need.

When Bratton was commissioner in Los Angeles, he oversaw an escalation of police stops and police violence unprecedented even in New York City. With Bratton at the wheel, LAPD stops spiked from 587,200 in 2002 to 875,204 by 2008—and almost exclusively targeted people of color, specifically Black and Latino men.

There was also a significant bump in arrests for minor crimes such as loitering and disorderly conduct, a 17-percent increase in non-lethal police force (stun guns, bean bag guns, etc.) and a dramatic decrease in accountability as just 1.6 percent of citizen complaints against the LAPD were upheld by the department.

Read More | "Don't Expect the NYPD to Change in 2014" | Nick Malinowski | Vice