FT takes Bratton to lunch, they talk L.A. and London

Gillian Tett, the U.S. managing editor for the Financial Times, begins her story by writing, "the first thing I notice about Bill Bratton is that he is wearing a dapper silk tie covered with dancing elephants. I feel disappointed. Before our meeting, I had visualised Bratton as a Harrison Ford lookalike from a Hollywood police thriller."

One of the first things the former LAPD chief says to her at the Manhattan restaurant where they meet: "So I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I was expecting a much older woman. You have squeezed quite a lot into a relatively short time.” And so it went. Bratton does say of London's police:

Perhaps I would compare London right now more with the way that the LAPD was in 2002 – a dispirited workforce, a lack of trust of leadership in the organisation and a profound loss of confidence in the leadership of government. And that is only to be expected when the [UK] government is laying people off ... Morale is awful. All you have to do is read their police blogs.

Drawing in the FT by James Ferguson