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Predictions 2013: All Eyes On Bratton
December 31, 2012
JANUARY. City Council Speaker and mayoral front-runner Christine Quinn, who appeared to favor reappointing Ray Kelly police commissioner, meets with former Police Commissioner Bratton.
Quinn says her meeting with Bratton — who has also met with her three mayoral rivals to tell them of his availability to return as police commissioner — is unrelated to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s asking Hillary Clinton to enter the mayoral race.
“It’s true, I thought I was Mike’s Number One, but Bill does have some interesting ideas about policing,” Quinn says after the meeting. “And he is actually a very nice person when he’s not talking about himself.”
FEBRUARY. The Police Foundation presents its first “Ray Kelly Courage in Academia Award” to CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein.
In Sep. 2011, after NYPD Confidential reported that the NYPD’s Intelligence Division had spied on Muslim students groups at half-a-dozen City University campuses, Goldstein issued the following statement: “In this matter since the colleges were not consulted and have indicated no knowledge on the subject, it would be inappropriate for me to make speculative comment.”
Second prize: Jeremy Travis, the president of John Jay College. After the Associated Press reported that a police informant had been assigned to monitor John Jay’s Muslim Student Association, Travis pronounced himself “deeply troubled,” and said he would “convey these concerns to the NYPD on behalf of our community.”
Travis conveyed his concerns to Kelly’s chief aide and spokesman, Paul Browne. Travis has refused to say what, if anything, happened after that.
MARCH. Former Comptroller William Thompson, who is also running for mayor, points out to reporters that, as the only black mayoral candidate, he favors continuing Kelly’s Stop and Frisk policy, which targets young black and Hispanic New Yorkers.
“Race should play no part in stopping crime — or in this election,” he says.
APRIL. Al Sharpton says he agrees with Thompson that race should play no part in the election. He adds that if the new mayor does not reappoint Ray Kelly police commissioner, he will leave his job at MSNBC and return to leading demonstrations.
“If that means I have to give up a few hundred thousand dollars in salary, it is America’s loss,” says the Rev. “It will only lengthen the time for me to pay off the hundreds of thousands of dollars I owe in back taxes.”
MAY. The Police Foundation presents the first “Ray Kelly Speaking Truth to Power Award” to Daily News columnist Mike Lupica.
“It was a difficult choice,” says foundation head H. Dale Hemmerdinger, “but Lupica stood out.”
Hemmerdinger cited a recent Lupica column on Mayor Bloomberg’s attempts to tighten gun control laws that began: “Raymond Kelly, the police commissioner of the City of New York, has seen people in his city shot, has seen them pushed in front of subway trains by mumbling homeless people as recently happened to Sunando Sen at the 40th Street-Lowery station in Sunnyside, Queens, and to Ki-Suck Han at the 7th Avenue and 49th Street station in Manhattan.”
Honorable mention: Rupert Murdoch’s Twitter remark: “Why is the Jewish-owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?”
Although Abe Foxman, the head of the Anti-defamation League accepted Murdoch’s apology, Hemmerdinger pointed out that Foxman has yet to explain why he and his organization remained silent for three weeks after the 1991 Crown Heights riot in which a black mob stabbed to death an Orthodox Jewish scholar.
JUNE. Mayor Bloomberg asks CIA Director General David Petraeus to consider running for mayor.
“New Yorkers are forgiving of personal indiscretions,” Bloomberg tells him. “Just look at my predecessor.”
Apparently caught off guard by a reporter’s question, Bloomberg replies, “No, I don’t know what the general’s position on gun control is. Frankly, it’s none of my business. And none of yours either.”
Bloomberg denies reports that Petraeus demanded the weekend use of his home in Bermuda.
JULY. Paul Browne is offered the newly created position of Secret Intelligence Correspondent at the Daily News. News Publisher Mortimer Zuckerman says, “Paul and I see eye to eye on terrorism and just about everything else.”
He adds, “Where does Rupert Murdoch get off saying that the Jewish-owned press is anti-Israel? What am I, chopped liver?”
Asked to comment, Murdoch says, “Have you seen the Daily News lately? It’s no longer a newspaper. Have you ever tried reading Lupica?”
AUGUST. Bloomberg asks Condoleezza Rice to consider running for mayor.
“O.K., she got it wrong on Iraq,” Bloomberg says. “So who among us hasn’t made a mistake?”
He adds that Rice never asked about the use of his home in Bermuda.
SEPTEMBER. Bloomberg asks his so-called girlfriend Diana Taylor to run for mayor.
“O.K., so Diana bad-mouthed Kirsten Gillebrand after I pushed her to run for the Senate a couple of years ago. So does that make her a bad person? Who remembers, anyway?”
OCTOBER. Public Advocate Bill De Blasio overtakes Christine Quinn as the mayoral front-runner. First order of business, he promises, is to appoint a commission to investigate why, after nearly three years, Kelly’s blue-ribbon crime commission never issued a report.
Second order of business, he says, is to investigate the now defunct NYPD Counter-Terrorism Foundation, which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from secret donors.
NOVEMBER. Kelly’s Chief of Staff Joe Wuench, who was the secretary of the NYPD Counter-Terrorism Foundation, announces is retirement from the police department. He is seen at Kennedy airport boarding a plane to Brazil.
Wuensch denies he has contacted John Picciano, the top aide of former police commissioner Bernie Kerik’s, who took it on the lam to Brazil in 2005, a half-step ahead of his creditors.
DECEMBER. Bratton, former first deputy Joe Dunne and former head of the FBI’s New York office Pat D’Amuro issue a statement reading: “Ray Kelly may be one of the most miserable people in the world but homicides are at record lows and there has not been another terrorist attack against New York since 9/ll. Let’s give the man some credit.”
In a footnote, the eminent police historian Tom Reppetto says, “I agree with everything in the statement — except that Kelly is not the world’s most miserable person. “In my luncheons with him at the Harvard Club, he was very entertaining.”
Edited by Donald Forst
