I [William " Bill" Bratton] am a police reformer and have been since I was promoted to the rank of sergeant in the Boston Police Department in 1975. There were many good cops in Boston in those days, but there was also an insular culture that had some racist, brutal, corrupt, and lazy elements. I was motivated to advance in rank to get above the bad actors and try to do something about them. I had a vision of policing, shared by others of my generation, that looked beyond the stultifying bureaucracy, the curdled cynicism and the sheer indifference that characterized a lot of police work then. Read Bill Bratton's op-ed on his last day as NYC's police commissioner.