LOS ANGELES, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- William J. Bratton has issued a warning to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The new police chief said he would have "very little patience" with those who do not support his vision for the 9,000 officers in the LAPD.
Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn announced his selection Thursday and the City Council is expected to confirm Bratton in a vote that could come as soon as next week.
"This is an underperforming department," Bratton, 54, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Saturday. "They know it. You know it."
Bratton, the former head of police in New York City, told the newspaper that his template for change will be the federal consent decree that the city signed last year after the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that the LAPD had for years been engaging in a "patter or practice" of civil rights violations.
"If you don't embrace (the decree), if you aren't prepared to embrace it, put your retirement papers in, because you won't be part of my command staff driving change in this department," he told the Times.
"The department needs to clearly understand there's a new sheriff in town."
Bratton said he plans to have his new command staff in place within two weeks of being sworn in. The team will be made up mostly of current LAPD personnel, he said.
He also outlined a plan for a re-engineered LAPD made up of 18 divisions that essentially operate as district police departments commanded by captains under order to respond to community needs.
To reduce crime, he will use a version of the system he put in place in New York City to help divisions work together to target problem areas. Known as CompStat, the system relied on computer-generated crime data to guide police response efforts and identify hot spots.
