Police Commissioner Robert Taggart - Promotion Speech 9/26/03

Police Commissioner Robert Taggart

Before I start, I have to tell everybody that today is September 26th,………. it is a most important day in my life……. And no Mr. Mayor, it’s not because today is the day I was made Police Commissioner.
Thirty-three years ago, on this very day, that beautiful lady and I got married; today is our 33rd wedding anniversary. And I want to thank her for all her support that I have received over those 33 years.
I also want to thank all the law enforcement ethnic societies that came out and responded to my invitation to be here this morning. I want you to know that I recognize that your participation in those societies is a reflection of you commitment and your pride in being a police officer - and I know that it’s also a reflection of your commitment to community because those societies do good work in the communities where they operate and I want to thank you for joining me here today - and more importantly, - I want to thank you for the commitment to your profession and to your communities. Thank you for coming.
I am extremely grateful to all the law enforcement executives who came out to be here with me this morning. I thank you for coming. I am so proud that you people came out here to show the world - in essence - that law enforcement is combined, to working together to make good things happen, I am grateful for your attendance here this morning. And of course, Mr. Mayor I want to thank you for your decision to make me Police Commissioner today and allow me to lead this fine department.
You see decisions are what it’s all about, that’s what’s important, making decisions. I recently listened to a speech by President Clinton…. former President Clinton…. and in that speech he said something to the effect of this:
Leaders of government do not cause economic decline, they do not cause markets to fall or the quality of life to deteriorate…. anymore than they can cause prosperity or peace. All they can do is make decisions….. and all we can ask them to do is to make good decisions. Make the kinds of decision that will be good for the greatest number of people. It is the long-term effect of those decisions that determine our destiny.
Many years ago, here in the City of Yonkers, its people and its Police Department were in dire straights. The city was at the verge of bankruptcy.
People were suffering from high crime; the department was in trouble.
The Police department was under funded, undermanned, poorly trained, ill equipped and seriously at odds with the community that we were trying to serve.
This city was regarded as a high crime area and Police Officers, frustrated by the lack of community support, had to do whatever they could to suppress crime. Despite our lack of resources our Police Officers were ……. well,…… let us say resourceful.
To some extent we got the job done, we did the best we could in bad times. But along the way we built barriers between ourselves and the community that we were trying to serve. It was not easy for us to get our jobs done without the support of the people, that we desperately needed.
We desperately needed our leaders to make the right kinds of decisions. But instead of receiving righteous decisions we got political interference. The Police department was targeted for a study by an outside consulting firm that criticized our operations. That report was inaccurate in many respects. But those of us that held leadership positions within the department knew that the department needed reform.
That was about 14 years ago. A committee was formed from people within the department to study issues for the department. An internal committee was formed, we were charged with the responsibility of making long-term plans to make this a better department. The committee included myself and former Commissioner Cassino, former Commissioner Don Christopher and others. We put together a list of recommendations.
We recommended better training programs, expanded system for receiving civilian complaints, we suggested areas where we might be able to apply for grants, we recommended revitalization of the community councils, and I want to mention too that the community councils are here today and they have been revitalized and are doing vital work for this city. They are keeping the Police Department in touch with our citizens.
We recommended that precinct Captains be given greater discretion in setting up patrol strategies. And we recommended that we work hard to get better relations with our community. Most of all we recommended that the leadership of the Police department should make the decisions in the department….. Police decisions should be left to police professionals, let us do our job.
One of our strong recommendations was to work to build better community relations. To that end another committee was formed and this was the committee to improve relations for the department.
Persons representing minority groups, women, the clergy, homeowners, were selected to serve with us and to make these recommendations. The committee included:
Burt Wallace of NAACP, Pat Sadler from the YWCA, Mr. Crawford from the Human Rights Commission, my good friend Wilda Mejias from the Spanish Progress Foundation, Gene Capella, the Reverend Evans, police personnel and community residents. And again a list of recommendations were made, these included the drafting of a mission statement, a recommendation for civilian review of the internal affairs process and a recommendation that we set standards for this department that would be high enough that to allow us to receive accreditation from the Department of Criminal Justice Services. Shortly after those submissions were made they were submitted,…. nearly thirteen years ago, I was approached and asked to become the Deputy Chief of the Police Department to make the things that were contained in those recommendations a reality.
I knew that it would be a daunting task, you know it’s very easy to make recommendations, it’s quite something else to make them happen. It’s very difficult to make things happen at times. I though that the risk of failure would be very high and that in the final analysis I would be made to look bad…..But I love my Police department and wanted to do what I could.
I though of the words of Abraham Lincoln, he said that, “the probability that we might fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we know is just”. That is why I accepted the assignment and began a long and difficult task of working towards improving this department.
Early on we made some progress but it was very slow. Then about 7 ½ years ago we had a new Mayor elected, Mayor John Spencer
and he had to make decisions, because what happens in the world in determined by the decisions. He had to make the decisions, about who would run the Police Department and he decided to allow the Police professionals within the department to run the department, What a novel idea! Let the police leaders lead the department. Although we’ve had succession of police commissioners his decision to allow those Police Commissioner’s to run the department really drove us to be a better department today. And I am pleased to tell you that, that succession of Police Commissioners allowed me to serve as second as command all during that 7-½ years. I am very proud that I have been allowed to serve with such great men as Joe Cassino, Don Christopher, Charlie Cola because together we just tried to make the right decisions.
In a little over 7 years we saw our relationship with the community improve. We saw our department grow from a department of fewer than 500 officers to a department of more than 600 officers. Today we have better training, better equipment, newer equipment, we saw a communications system that was stalled in developed, finally come on line. We just tried to do our job better with the professionals leading us. I think we did do the job better.
Economic development in the city improved.
If you got about 2 ½ hours to listen to me I’ll tell you a story about how a good Police department can drive the economy of a city, but I spare you that for now.
The goals that I thought would be so elusive just became so much easier with the professionals that were running the job. One by one each one of those recommendations has been implemented. Even the very difficult task of attaining DCJS accreditation was achieved just earlier this month and I have to tell you that we’ve been certified as a accredited agency….and fewer then 20% of the Police departments in this state can make that claim…..And I am very proud of the work that our officers did to make that happen.
Now the Mayor has made another decision. He has decided to allow me to run this fine department and I can only hope that the decisions that I make will serve to improve the quality of life for the citizens of Yonkers.
As your new leader,…. to our Police Officers,…. I will say this, from Odell to Radford from the Hudson to the Bronx River, we are here to protect our people the good people of the City of Yonkers and we will do our job just that way, we will protect our people. From East Side to West side all around town there are good people….good people… that deserve our protection, deserve our service and we will deliver it to them. All we need to do to get the support of the community is decide, decide that you want their support and work with the community that you serve and to get that support all you need to do is to decide that your going to act professionally. That you’re going to perform your job in a righteous manner. You will exercise your duties without favor or prejudice.
Our community support is very high. I’ll tell my police officers our community support is high! It is high in communities where you may not think it so! We’re doing a good job all over this city …all over the city people just want to be safe, that’s all they want. The good people of our community support us if it were not so we could not have achieved all that we have. What we need to do is build more bridges, better bridges to the community that we serve. In your daily work as a police officer you have to decide, who are good people? And who are the doers of evil. That is not an easy task. To make that determination you have to rely upon your training. You cannot decide that on the basis of the color of their skin, their economic status, or the neighborhood in which they live. You need to understand the content of their character ……that’s not easy. I don’t expect it to be easy; you’ll make mistakes. I’ll make mistakes. But if were well trained and rightly motivated, good things will happen to this Police department and will continue to happen to this city. This Police department has gotten better and the city has gotten better.
Years ago it was a city where bad decisions were made and bad things happened in the city economically, development wise. And in the long run bad things happened to the Police department. Take a look around now at what’s happened in the City.
Over the last 7 years we’ve seen incredible revitalization. I’d invite the people in this audience today that think they know Yonkers or think that they know what the West side of Yonkers is like….. when you leave here take a walk around and see what’s going on in this city. The development is fabulous, this city is going places, and you can be part of it…. and I’m so proud to be the Police Commissioner at a time then good things are goings to happen. They’re are going to happen for this city and they’re going to happen for our police officers.
Our police officers need to know that the destiny of this city and the quality of our (inaudible) is directly tied to their own destiny. If the city prospers then department will prosper. And that is what we need……. to work for making this a better and safer city. We have portions of our city where the economic conditions are already somewhat better than they are here but I have to tell you something, if we don’t diligently patrol those neighborhoods, if we don’t develop strategies for our better communities, we’ll simply trade one bad neighborhood for another. We need to redouble our efforts in those communities to make sure that the quality of life doesn’t decline in neighborhoods where the quality of life today is pretty good….. and I think we can do that. At this juncture if we fail to make good decisions bad things will happen. To prevent crime, to win friends for the department, to discourage rowdies …….seriously, discouraging rowdies…. doing away with disorder will all serve to make our community better and make our department more well liked.
To those in the department who might scoff at the idea that we can be professional, let me tell you this,…. 99% of our police officers hit these streets everyday and they risk their lives, they put their lives on the line, they do their job right, they do it professionally and when you don’t act professionally your cast dispersions upon those good officers. I will tell you this if you besmirch the name of this Yonkers Police Department, I will have little forgiveance for that. I expect you to do your job.

To our newly appointed detectives,….. I will tell you that you were selected to be Detectives because you have proved yourselves by virtue of your work and your service not only to your department but to your fellow police officers, don’t forget where you come from. The uniform officers on this job deserve your support and your respect. They’re out there everyday doing a difficult job and you are the persons that will have the skills to assist them, ….that’s what it’s all about…..backing up the uniform people, that’s why you’ve been made detectives. God bless you …..that’s what I want you to do. Remember where you came from.
To our newly appointed supervisors, you now have to make decisions. You will have to make decisions that will affect the safety of our city, the careers of your subordinates and the reputation of this department. In making those decisions use your leadership skills, remember our officers are dedicated to each other and dedicated to the task at hand. They don’t need to be pushed, they need to lead and you need to lead them by your example. If you lead by example, they will follow. Know your job do it well. That is all we can ask.
To the law enforcement officials that are here ….I will tell you that we will cooperate in every way possible to create and protect a better greater community. We will protect the greater community and we’ll work together to protect our nation. We’ll enhance our intelligence unit and we will gather information and share that information with surrounding communities to the extent that we can. We will continue to support our joint operation task forces and will do our part to protect homeland security.
To the people of the City of Yonkers I will say this, I have decided that I will do the best to give you the best police department that you can possibly have, I think you already have the best department in the state. We’ll make it better I promise you that. We will develop plans to suppress disorderly persons, we’ll enhance our domestic violence unit, expand their training. We’ll work towards the goal of putting more officers on the street and we’ll work very closely with those civic groups and communities groups to keep our city safe.
And to the criminal element that is here in the city of Yonkers ------I am going to tell you what a criminal once told me, “Yonkers cops don’t play”, We will hunt you down, we will lock you up, we will bring you before the bar of justice we’ll put you away,…. we don’t play.
And to the Mayor I vow that this day will be the day that you remember, as the day you made a good police commissioner. Thank you.

People that know me, know that I am found of quoting the great philosophers scientists, and presidents. And so I will leave you with the favorite closing of President George Bush.
Thank you, God bless you and God bless America.