Bratton: I Wouldn’t Take Police Chief Job in a Major City, ‘Extraordinarily Difficult’ ‘to Succeed in This Climate’

On Tuesday’s “Fox News Primetime,” former Police Commissioner of Boston, Los Angeles, and New York Bill Bratton said he wouldn’t take a job as a police chief in a major city now “Because the ability to succeed in this climate is going to be extraordinarily difficult for any police chief, myself included.”

Host Brian Kilmeade asked, “If I gave you the keys to a major city now, even with your track record of success, could you be successful in this climate?”

Bratton responded, “Well, first off, I wouldn’t take them. Because the ability to succeed in this climate is going to be extraordinarily difficult for any police chief, myself included. And these are very difficult and extraordinary times.”

He added, “Well, where we are is not where we want to be, certainly. It brings me back to the 1970s, in terms of when I first began in policing. And in the 1970s, we were defunding the police. We were laying cops off by the thousands. We were also letting hundreds of thousands of people out of our mental institutions who became homeless, and we were decriminalizing, similar to what’s going on now. … And all of that is basically happening right now, 50 years later.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett