In an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, former New York Police Department Commissioner William "Bill" Bratton lamented that his old friend, Rudy Giuliani, has become a joke.
"As somebody who's got a big ego, speaking about another guy with a big ego, I can't understand how he allowed himself to be subsumed by Trump," Bratton told Dowd. "He's made a caricature of himself and he's lost the image of America's mayor because of the antics of the last two or three years."
Bratton was recognized in the 1990s as an advocate of "community policing" where cops live in the neighborhoods they cover and build relationships with residents, instead of being outsiders.
He recalled that Giuliani "had such awful relations with the Black community and the Black leadership, it really prevented police commissioners, myself included, from developing relationships that we would love to have made with the Black community."
After the 2020 election, Giuliani has rushed to defend former President Donald Trump both in court and in public.
Bratton also went off against the right-wing insurrectionists at the Capitol and their disdain for the police.
"We saw how pro-police that mob was, didn't we?" Bratton said. "I know a lot of the cops really liked Trump because they feel he stands up for them against a lot of progressives. I personally believe that he was encouraging that insurrection that day."
