New York Police Chief Ray Kelly

R.K.: Well, I don't think everybody's is throwing brickbats.

L.G.: Not everybody, but there are people who are concerned about privacy.

R.K.: You'd be hard-pressed to find them, other than the civil liberties union, the A.C.L.U. That's something they bring up—nobody else brings it up. You go into a department store, your picture is taken 20 times. That's the world we live in, I think post-9/11, people accept that. We are only using cameras in public areas. Nothing private about it. There's no expectation of privacy when you walk down the street. This is the area that we are taking pictures of. We have no intention of archiving this material, for more than, say, 30 days.

L.G.: In other words, you won't do it?

R.K.: We won't do it. There's no purpose in doing it. We want to allay people's concerns about it. It's for real-time security. It will also have predictive software built in, again state of the art. What do I mean by predictive software? Let me give you a simple example. If a truck goes around the block three times, we'll say, that will set off a certain indicator, or there's a package on a certain location, unattended for X period of time, that will also set off an indicator. I believe the Lower Manhattan area will be the most secure, but also open, business district anywhere. It'll be far beyond what's happened in London, and the London authorities certainly agree. They've been helpful with us, but they know that we're moving beyond what they've done. We know that area has to be secure, but we know it has to be open to be commercially viable. So it's a balance, and we certainly attempt to strike that balance.

L.G.: You've also heard from people who were unhappy with the way the New York cops handled the 2004 Republican convention in terms of public protest. You're sometimes criticized as allegedly having less admiration for the right of public assembly than others.

R.K.: [Laughs] That's not the case. I think the Republican National Convention was one of this department's finest hours. We had 800,000 people who came here for a demonstration, and nobody was hurt except one cop who was beaten and kicked. Look what's happened at other conventions, much smaller conventions. Look what happened in Denver, Minneapolis, St. Paul—macing people. None of that happened here. They came here—"they" being certain elements—to shut down the city. You have to remember that this was an incumbent administration having its convention here, all the principals coming here. This wasn't an outgoing administration, this was conceivably an administration that was going to be reelected. So they came here with the intention—and stated openly—of shutting the city down. That didn't happen. What did happen is the criminal justice system was overloaded, and it's understandable that when you arrest that number of people, you're not going to be able to handle them in the way you handle a normal flow of arrests on another day. But I thought the cops did a terrific job. All you have to do is look at the statements of CNN and the New York Times who have praised us liberally for the work that we did during the convention.

L.G.: So basically the New York Times and CNN—those are your metrics?  

R.K.: Absolutely, and many others say exactly the same thing. This is New York, this is the litigation capital of the world. We understand that, we accept that as the working environment we have to operate in.

L.G.: I want to get into some of your core management principles, but unlike a business, you also have a lot of crisis events to contend with, just internal situations which are public hot buttons. For instance, you had to deal with this horrible, tragic situation of the Taser incident, where the guy fell and died and then the lieutenant who was reprimanded committed suicide—which is just a horrific thing for you personally to have to deal with. Walk me through what that was like.

R.K.: Well, this was a terrible tragedy for all concerned. I know that we handle about 88,000 calls a year with emotionally disturbed persons, and the overwhelming majority are handled without any problem at all. But each one is different than the other one. We take our emergency service officers and we train them, and they'll have six months of additional training. They're hand-selected, and they are trained to deal with these situations. We're human beings, sometimes we make mistakes, but unfortunately in this business, when you make mistakes, it can cost lives. In the rest of the world, in the private sector, you make a mistake, it costs money. In this business, you make a mistake, it can cost lives. So the ante is much higher in policing when you make a mistake. It's unfortunate that the Taser was used in that situation. Of course, it resulted in a loss of life, but the overwhelming majority of situations that we handle are done well. And we have departments coming from all over the world to see how we handle the emotionally disturbed.

L.G.: Right, but have you ever dealt with a situation where an official executive action on your part and the part of your managers was connected with a suicide of a police lieutenant? That's tough stuff to have to deal with—all the press with the lieutenant's family saying that you, Ray Kelly, are not welcome at the funeral.

R.K.: No, I did go. I think it was unfortunate. The father told me that he didn't think it out, he apologized. And this is not an easy job.

L.G.: You've got to be internally tough. I mean, that is emotionally wrenching.

R.K.: It's a very demanding job.

L.G.: You once described the New York City Police Department as being as mysterious to outsiders as the Vatican. What did you mean by that?