City Paper: When did you first work with the Maple-Linder people?

Edward Norris: I don't have quite the history with the Maple-Linder group people think I have. I met Jack Maple when I was a cop on 42nd Street. He was a sergeant. That is the first time I met him and I knew him from when I walked my foot post and he had the same post -- he was in the transit police at the time. Then I was re-acquainted with him when they came to town [with former New York Police Commissioner William] Bratten. [Maple] was deputy commissioner. I was a lieutenant at the time. They were doing a tentative talent search in the department for who was going to be on the team. . . . And I was fortunate enough to know the people Bratten selected and that's where I met Maple. I was too low level at the time, frankly. . . . They were dealing with the chiefs and the commissioners at the time. I was an operational person. I was in charge of actually enforcing operational policy. . . . When people said they couldn't catch fugitives, they're running around, I did. I would take my detectives and go out and do it. That's my only real work with them before now. I was operations. I didn't make policy when they were there.

CP: Did they actually start the Crimestat/Comstat process [a system to map crime trends and hold ranking police accountable for developing strategies to attack them] there?

EN: That is Jack Maple's idea. The sea change is his. He actually decided to hold police accountable for crime and he started out with just push pins and a paper map in a little tiny conference room. And then when it became successful -- when people actually saw that the police were being held accountable and all that stuff -- and crime started to drop and we got a lot of funding from other sources, then we were able to do it with computers.

CP: At some point you were running that process.

EN: When he left. When Maple left.

CP: So you replaced him?

EN: Yes, when he left. It's actually a funny story. I was very closely tied to the Bratten administration and a lot of people in the department were very unhappy with the things they were being told to do, like work weekends, work nights, catch crooks, be the police -- do your job. You know, all that stuff was not very popular. So when Bratten left and I was one of his key people on the operational level, there was an attempt to kind of end my career. And the chief at the time went to the police commissioner and told him I should be done away with, demoted, fired, whatever. I was a problem. And the same chief was calling me "Dead Man Walking" in the hallway. The movie had just come out and I would walk down the hall. He was a three-star chief. And he would yell out, "Dead Man Walking!" What a way to live.

We had the meeting with the commissioner. He was Howard Safir at the time. . . . They saw it as an opportunity to get rid of me and it backfired. Because after the meeting with the police commissioner that day and several times after that, he was looking for someone with street experience who could help him operationally. And about a month later, I was deputy police commissioner and that guy is no longer the chief. [Laughs.]

CP: What I've heard about you -- from other cops -- is that you are a real cop, that you're not the administrative type. And I've also heard from people here that they're very comfortable talking to you about things going on in the department, that you seem to be very open. What is your management style?

EN: I truly, and people say it all the time, I really do try to lead by example. I did not come up through the ranks by working police headquarters or police academy or safe assignments. Unfortunately, a lot of police leaders in the NYPD and around the country get to the top and they have not quite enough field experience that they might need to speak to the field people, the people who actually do this job, the cops, one-on-one look them in the eye and talk about police work and have them know that you know exactly what they do -- all the good stuff they do and all the bad stuff they do.

CP: When you were first brought down here, you were supposed to be running things on a day-to-day basis. But Ron Daniel is definitely a hands-on kind of person.

EN: Right.

CP: How was that supposed to work, with you running things on a day-to-day thing but him also being a hands-on person?

EN: It works. I mean, Ron gave me complete freedom to run the department. I've been here a couple months. . . . He gave me the complete authority to run the operations of the field. He did what police commissioners do. There are a lot of other duties, as I'm finding out, that are not always police-related that the commissioner has to take care of. That's what he was doing. He was running all around all parts of the city taking care of what he had to with commissioner duties. He gave me a lot of authority. We met every day. We'd discuss what was going on. He'd give me things if he had complaints from people. We had a good relationship.

CP: There was some general impression within the department and a little bit outside the department that when the mayor hired you, there was a power struggle going on between you and the former commissioner. Can you comment on that?

EN: I don't know. Who said that?

CP: There's a lot of grapevine stuff inside the department and I heard some speculation with some politicians as well.

EN: That's pure speculation. I can tell you straight up, we had no power struggle between he and I. He was my boss. I was real comfortable with that and very happy with the job I had. Whatever decisions he made inside to leave were his and it was between him and the mayor. I called him Friday [April 7] and was just talking to him to see how he was doing. It's none of that. This is just people I think [who] are looking for some kind of plot that didn't exist.

CP: There's been a lot of speculation also that Ron Daniel was brought in to get rid of people, fire the deadwood, and that he wasn't meant to be here a long time. He says he thinks you are very well-qualified to do this job. But you're facing a lot of opposition right now in various parts of the community. How are you going to deal with that? What do you think the community needs to do to feel comfortable with you?

EN: They need to really get to know me, hear the message we're trying to get out. Unfortunately, I'm inheriting a lot of things that were not my doing. There's no such thing as the "zero tolerance" mantle that's been placed upon me. If people sit down, read the plan -- which is basically just a sound plan for re-organizing the department and holding the police accountable on every level -- crime-fighting, integrity, discipline, training. . . . I don't know how anybody can argue with this. And I just think it's going to take time for people to get to know me. I wish people would just call their friends in New York to ask about me, ask the cops that worked for me and the people that I worked for what I'm about.

CP: We have a very inexperienced police department here. The average officer has less than five years on the street. Relating that to some of the incidents that happened in New York -- unarmed black males being shot -- it seems that in New York this has happened with plainclothes units that are not under direct supervision. What are you going to do with the training here to make sure those kinds of incidents aren't a problem here?

EN: You can't make sure. But you certainly try to minimize them and you do that through training. One of the things we found and learned being up there when we had a lot of tragic incidents, it was one thread: It was training and supervision. . . . It's a very, very dangerous business we're in. And we ask the police to put their lives on the line for people they don't know and very often [don't] like them. But they have to do it. . . . But they need to be trained, where they're confident in their abilities to take care of themselves, maintain their weapons, not resort to deadly physical force, except as a last resort. And then the other part is supervision. One of the things we found whenever there is -- and this isn't just the ones you read about with brutality, corruption scandals historically -- always the key and a common thread is lack of supervision. . . . I know the cops [in a recent New York corruption scandal] told the internal-affairs people that they knew when Sgt. Smith was working, "he don't mess around." When Sgt. Jones was working, "he's all right, cool boss, you know, one of the boys."

CP: One of the things I noticed in this report was something about "corrupt behavior exists unknown to police management and supervisors." There are certain districts here where you can go into the district parking lots and see 24-, 25-year-old officers driving Mercedes and Lexuses. How is it possible that there isn't some more awareness of that?

EN: One of the questions I asked when I was interviewed for this job, I wanted to know what the integrity situation was here. What were internal-affairs capabilities? How were they doing in the past rooting it out? It seemed like it was not a real proactive, strong internal-affairs unit. I think that's the problem: If you don't look for it, you don't find it.

CP: Colonel [Robert] Novak, whom you appointed chief of patrol [the fourth-highest ranking officer in the department, who is in charge of all patrol officers] -- under Commissioner [Thomas] Frazier, he was the head of IID [the Internal Investigations Division]. At the time that the serious allegations of discrimination [in police-department promotions and disciplinary actions] came up, he was very quietly moved out of that job by Commissioner Frazier. What signal do you think it's sending internally to African-American officers that he is now the chief of patrol?

EN: I think they really need to know -- all the cops -- Novak was promoted at the recommendation of Barry Powell [an African-American colonel who is now deputy chief of operations, the number-two position in the department]. I think that is something that people would be surprised to know. . . . We had settled on one or two [candidates for chief of patrol]. We had narrowed it down and Barry called me at 11 o'clock at night and said, "I changed my mind." He said, "I really [think] that's what we need right now, he's the guy." I have all the faith in the world in Barry's judgment, he hasn't steered me wrong yet. . . . Barry's been here 29 years. . . . If he's confident and comfortable, then so am I.

CP: The discrimination issue inside the department has been going on since 1996, publicly. Last year, the [U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] re-opened a case in which they had found against the department, specifically to grant [EEOC] subpoena powers because the department had not been cooperating. There are also a couple of very high-profile cases, the Richards case and the Hopson case. [City police Sgt. Robert Richards has sued the department, claiming discrimation; Sgt. Louis Hopson is the lead plaintiff in the EEOC case.] What are you doing to do in terms of the EEOC and these cases?

EN: I have to look at all these cases because I haven't been in this job long enough to actually read all the facts. But one of the things I find to be very glaring and perceive as unfair is how protracted the periods are that these things go on. My intent -- and I will do it as quickly as I can -- is make decisions on all these things, whichever way they happen to turn out, as quickly as possible. Because if you go on, you let these things just fester and linger for years, it's unfair to both sides. . . . I think the key to this is just speedy justice to resolve these cases quickly.

CP: IID has a tremendous backlog and there's still a perception -- to some degree justified -- that what IID does is in many cases retaliatory, particularly when it comes to officers who have made some kind of complaint, whether it's discrimination or corruption. What are you going to do to weed that out?

EN: I'm going to professionalize it dramatically. They're going to report right to me. . . . One of the things we're gonna do is actually make them an effective corruption-fighting unit. . . . I take this stuff really seriously. I was the chief investigator for New York City at the Department of Investigation, which is the corruption-investigating arm of the city that actually does corruption all the way from sanitation workers to the mayor. So I'm really proud of my background and I take it really seriously.

CP: There's often a perception that police officers view African-American citizens in a group as inherently threatening or dangerous. What are you going to do to make sure that there's serious multicultural and diversity training, that officers are taking seriously?

EN: That's a good question. The problem is a lot of training in police department, training anywhere -- cops only pay attention when they're interested, just like the rest of the public. You get them to listen because they see how tactical training impacts on their going home at night and it's really important to the job. But a lot of the cultural-diversity training is done in a classroom setting, it's done at the academy, it's done at roll calls. If it's not interesting, they're throwing paper airplanes and just not paying attention. [Training here] is going to be scenario-based, and we're going to make it all real-life stuff, where you're approaching three people, five people, 10 people on a corner, with a gun; a man selling drugs; car stops; family disputes. And we're going to incorporate training with cultural-sensitivity training. . . . It's not as stressful as being on the street, but it's a lot more stressful than in the classroom.

CP: I understand from some police officers that after the [April 10 police shooting of a gun-wielding suspect in a bar robbery] that you did something that hasn't happened here in a long time. After that officer finished talking to homicide detectives, you told him you thought he did a good job, which police officers here have complained they never hear from higher-ups. Why did you do that?

EN: Because I've been there. I've been in the street. I know what it's like to be scared to death. . . . It's unfortunate whenever we have to shoot someone, but [the suspect] was committing a crime with a gun in his hand. It was completely justified.

No one goes to work wanting to shoot anybody. . . . It's very, very traumatic for these cops, these young officers, to face danger, be scared, scared out of their minds. [In this case the officers] responded professionally and that was a terrific job done by all. It doesn't take much to say thanks.

CP: This police department has had a very poor reputation inside the community and a lot of it has come from people's perception that the police department is shading the truth, is spinning stories, is just not telling the truth. In this report it talks about numbers of positive and negative stories, about stories that are not "enhancing" the police department's image. What do you think the department needs to do publicly to deal with its credibility problem, and do you think it's that important whether the stories are positive or negative, as opposed to being accurate?

EN: I think it can be accurate and balanced. I think at the end of the day or the year, you'll get both. . . . I don't know what the reputation was prior to my getting here with the press and police. But I think they need to open up the organization. I can't give complete access -- obviously [there are] a lot of confidential things that go on in police departments investigatively. But I believe you gotta be as open as possible. Invite people in, talk to them, tell them what you're doing. It's the best way to insure you don't have problems with the community in the future -- to keep people informed.

CP: Is that what you feel needs to be done to correct the credibility problem the department has?

EN: Absolutely. And that's exactly what you need to do, which is get out as much and as often as possible. I intend to be as open as I can, bring people in, talk to the media. It's going to be an open agency.

CP: Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about that I haven't already asked you?

EN: I'd like someone to ask me about how we're going to save lives of children in the city, because it hasn't seemed to come up in any of my interaction with public appearances. . . . This is still the second most dangerous city in the country. And out of the 311 people killed last year, 34 were kids [under the age of 18]. And I'd like someone to talk about it and try to realize this is our mission, and I've got to keep this department focused on this. Because we can't let it go on any more.

CP: It does seem that both from the public and the media, seeing kids 15 , 16 , 17 years old killed in certain parts of this city doesn't arouse a whole lot of outrage or interest. How do you feel about that?

EN: I think it's disgraceful. It should. They're all kids, kids from the poorer sections or wealthiest sections. And actually this is a message I'm sending out to my officers -- part of the communication is also internal, making a videotape. I mentioned this: They're all our kids, and we are the last line of defense. That's what I tell in the video. We are the police. We have to act like the police. We are the last line of defense to kids of this city. And I talk about exactly what you said. It doesn't matter what neighborhood it's in -- the rich or poor -- they're all our kids. And we're responsible for their safety.