The New York City left’s plan for working with incoming mayor Bill de Blasio is to use his dependence on progressives’ support to hold his feet to the fire when he drifts too far to the right. But will such a strategy work for police policy, with activists aiming to eliminate quotas and stop and frisk, when de Blasio’s NYPD commissioner is someone so self-absorbed and intransigent that he earned a pink slip from Rudy Giuliani the last time he held the post, and is a key architect of the policing philosophy that helped produce such reactionary policies in the first place?

The announcement that the progressive mayor-elect would bring in the mastermind of the aggressive police tactics that defined the city in the 1990s angered progressives. Not only does the choice lessen the possibility of meaningful reform in the NYPD, but it threatens de Blasio’s ability to make good on his grand promise to address economic equality in the city.

The move shouldn’t be a surprise. De Blasio needs a law-and-order police head because he fears any rise in crime under his watch would embolden his right-wing critics, and a former NYPD commissioner is an acceptable replacement for Ray Kelly in the eyes of the force’s rank and file. (The city’s largest police union has already praised the appointment.)