Yeshiva, Bratton Honor Esserman

Tuesday evening marked the third time the legendary former New York and Boston Police Commissioner William J. Bratton has visited New Haven to celebrate the accomplishments of his protege, New Haven Police Chief Dean Esserman.

The Yeshiva of New Haven presented Esserman with its 2013 Community Service Award for his efforts combating crime with a renewed community policing program in town since returning here in 2011. Around 150 people – – including Yeshiva members, mayoral candidates, and police officials – – attended the yeshiva’s 36th Annual Gathering, co-sponsored by Edgewood Elm Housing, at Yale’s Berkeley College. Bratton delivered a talk, focused on the philosophy he shares with Esserman.

Esserman worked under Bratton as the counsel for the New York City Transit Police in the late 1980s. Bratton’s first visit to New Haven celebrated Esserman’s appointment as assistant chief in the early 1990s; Bratton returned in 2011 when Esserman was sworn in as the Elm City’s chief.

In his introduction Tuesday night, Bratton called Esserman among ​“the most innovative, creative, and inventive leaders” he has ever ​“had the privilege to know.” Esserman called Bratton his most influential teacher. ​“I stand in his shadow” of Bratton, he said after receiving his award. ​“And I stand there proudly.”

Bratton is best known for developing key parts of the community policing that sprang in cities (including New Haven) in the early 1990s in response to the previous decade’s soaring crime rates, including a data-driven rapid-response approach to neighborhood-level crime trends at weekly CompStat meetings. The approach in general focuses more on addressing small problems before they become bigger problems, in conjunction with the community and other law enforcement and social-service agencies.

“We effectively sought to arrest our way out of the crime problem,” Bratton said of American policing during the 1980s, ​“and we failed. Year after year after year.” Bratton posited that the ultimate root of criminal behavior is human behavior itself. The key, then, is to focus on people. The community policing model – – which focuses on problem solving, prevention, and partnerships in individual neighborhoods – – revolutionized the nation’s approach to policing and its perception of crime.

Esserman, among others, answered Bratton’s call to transform policing, embracing the model first in New Haven as an assistant chief, later as chief in Stamford and in Providence, and now, 20 years later, back in New Haven again.

“What I learned from Bratton is that behind every number is a name. Behind every statistic is a story,” Esserman said. New Haven, he added, had heard too many of those stories already. ​“I’m glad New Haven’s finest are turning that around.”