Bratton and Weiss talk about the security biz

As we noted last month, ex-LAPD chief William Bratton is the new board chairman of Kroll, the security firm, and former Los Angeles city councilman Jack Weiss is managing director of the Los Angeles office. They spoke to the L.A. Daily Journal this week about the company and its business. Excerpt:

DJ: Can you break down what Kroll does [in its Los Angeles office]?

Weiss: Everyone in this office has a background either as an attorney or a prosecutor or as an investigative journalist. A fellow who used to be head of the computer crimes section of the LAPD is now head of our computer crimes section. I had a recent case where it was essentially an international manhunt.

Bratton: I joke that we're basically Google on steroids. We are constantly buying up pages of newspapers and magazines - and there are certain keywords that we are retrieving from those articles, like 'indictment,' or 'criminal conviction.' So if we are supporting a company that is buying a company, we're going to want to scan all these articles - has this company's name ever appeared in an article with felony, scandal or fraud?

[skip]

DJ: What type of legal apparatus do you have to make sure you don't cross the line in some of these investigations?

Weiss: We are very aggressive, but we are the good guys in this business. We do things the right way. Kroll has in-house counsel in New York and on occasion you talk to in-house counsel. This is a company where we don't practice law, but most people in this company have a legal background or a law enforcement background.

Bratton: There was an expression I used with the cops all the time, you can't break the law to enforce the law.

Bratton is on with Patt Morrison this afternoon on KPCC, as I noted in today's Morning Buzz entry.

Photo: Daily Journal