A Police Department task force has recommended a sweeping reorganization that would raise standards for recruitment and graduation from the police academy and require monthly performance evaluations of officers.
Taken together, the 100 recommendations -- which range from transferring up to 200 clerical and administrative workers from police headquarters to the precincts, to giving precinct commanders new authority to combat corruption -- are designed to produce a decentralized, better trained and better supervised police department that is attuned to the needs of local, particularly minority, neighborhoods.
Implicit in the task force's 62-page report is the suggestion that the department needs a thorough overhaul if it is to avoid future scandals like the one that has overwhelmed the 30th Precinct in Harlem, and if officers are to get the direction and resources necessary to cut crime significantly.
Endorsing the common belief among senior officers that the force needs more mature and worldly police officers, the report recommended that the minimum age of recruits be raised to 22 from 20 and that recruits have two years of college education or military service before enlistment, rather than simply a high school degree.
It also recommended transforming precinct station houses to tie them more closely to their neighborhoods by installing bank teller machines in communities that have few of them and letting scout troops and elderly groups hold meetings there.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Bratton said he was "extraordinarily happy" with the report, which he said would be the foundation of a "plan of action" he will prepare over the next several weeks to accomplish the changes, which if implemented would be the most far-reaching the department has undergone in its 150-year history.
Senior aides said that while he objected to a few proposals, like a plan to privatize data processing, Mr. Bratton agreed with the report's fundamental proposals for raising recruitment standards, tightening supervision and moving functions from headquarters to the precincts.
Mr. Bratton, who appointed the panel last summer, delivered the document to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani late last week for his comments. If the Mayor gives his support, Mr. Bratton will be able to make many of the changes on his own. But several issues could be tested in court, like requiring higher educational standards for recruits -- a proposal that some minority police representatives have warned in the past could work against diversifying the force.
And Mr. Bratton may need the support of the unions to create new ranks such as police officer first class, master sergeant and first lieutenant, with slightly higher salaries, to reward with those patrol officers and supervisors who do the best jobs solving community problems and serving as role models to rookies.
While police officials said they did not believe that changes would be needed in civil service laws, a spokesman for Phil Caruso, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, said he could not comment on the proposals until he read the report and spoke with Mr. Bratton.
The planning panel called for an "immediate 20 percent reduction of staff in support units," which police officials said could translate into a transfer of 200 uniformed and civilian employees from headquarters to the precincts. Such personnel would replace uniformed officers now at desk jobs in the precincts, enabling more police and supervisors to patrol their beats.
Peter LaPorte, Mr. Bratton's chief of staff, said any openings at headquarters could eventually be filled by other personnel from the housing and transit police forces, which Mr. Guiliani hopes to merge into the police department by early next year. Whether there is a net reduction in civilian employees could depend on what money comes from the $30 billion crime package recently passed by Congress.
Apart from the panel's report, various police officials have been considering cuts in the civilian support force to alleviate pressures from City Hall to cut the budget. Police officials say they are not sure how much Mr. Giuliani will expect them to cut in the coming months.
The report comes amid a heightened sense of crisis in some quarters of the police department following a rash of suicides, the Mollen Commission's highly critical report on police corruption, which found fault with the department's training, screening and supervision, and the parade of arrests of officers assigned to the 30th Precinct on charges of perjury and drug charges.
The report includes many of the proposals urged by the Mollen Commission last July. But it made no mention of an independent monitor with subpoena powers that the commission said was necessary to prevent future scandals.
The report, which is at the core of Mr. Bratton's effort to "re-engineer" the department into a more effective organization, has been in the works since early spring. Twelve internal committees developed several hundred ideas in July that were distilled into a single report by a 17-member panel led by Michael Julian, the departing Chief of Personnel, and Deputy Chief Patrick Kelleher, the executive officer of the Patrol Services Bureau.
The final report was essentially a refinement of the earlier 12 committee reports, but it gave precinct commanders greater discretion in crime-fighting and corruption control. By going through this prolonged process of advise and consent, Mr. Bratton is attempting to win the active support of what has often been described as a cautious and conservative bureaucracy.
Police departments around the country have been attempting to decentralize, but the planning encouraged by Mr. Bratton goes further in encouraging patrol forces in the neighborhoods to take independent action against narcotics-related crime.
Under the report's proposals, perhaps the greatest change for the average officer on the beat would be monthly evaluation reports, in which precinct supervisors would grade appearance, problem-solving and respect shown to people in the community. The evaluations would become the basis for promotions and precinct assignments.
