Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Police Off the Cuff, Real Crime Stories.

I'm your host, retired NYPD, Sergeant Bill Cannon, a 27-year veteran of the NYPD.

With the election of Zoran Mamdami to be the mayor of New York City, there are so many questions.

And what we're going to approach this with is not just the politics of a democratic socialist

being elected as the mayor of New York City, which there are many. But for my area of

expertise is the area of policing.

And I would say that the years that I was on the NYPD were perhaps what may be known as the golden years of the NYPD in regards to the way the department adjusted to the high levels of crime

from the early 80s, right into the 90s and into the 2000s.

But there was a blueprint invented by some really smart police executives.

And that blueprint was a way to run the NYPD that resulted in the biggest

drop in the index crimes in New York City history. And New York became the safest large city in America.

And the Comstatt philosophy that was brought to the NYPD was copied by nearly every police department across the United States.

It was that innovative.

And it works.

It absolutely works. So what happens when something works

you've heard the old expression if it's not broke don't fix it well politicians wanted to fix it

because it worked too well and some politicians didn't like the fact that in the Comstead program, but the cornerstone of it was making arrests, making lots of arrests.

And being partners with other components in the criminal justice family, so to speak, the district attorney,

all district attorneys, all five boroughs district attorneys had to be on board.

They had to follow the prosecutorial philosophy that the NYPD needed to allow Comstatt to work.

And for those that don't know, Comstead stands for computer statistics.

And each commander of the 75 precincts across New York City was responsible for crime in his precinct.

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