In 2014, a political revolution happened in New York City. Bill de Blasio stormed into City Hall on a promise of reforming the New York Police Department (NYPD) after twelve years of technocratic and intermittently reactionary rule from mayor Michael Bloomberg. A majority of the City Council was term-limited, replaced by a younger, more progressive cohort.

De Blasio had been elected on a vow to reduce the police practice of stopping and frisking black and brown New Yorkers. He promised to fundamentally transform the way heavily armed police interacted with a populace that was tired of the NYPD’s heavy hand.

It soon became clear that de Blasio’s rhetoric couldn’t match reality. His new police commissioner was Bill Bratton, who first gained fame implementing a racist “broken windows” policing strategy under mayor Rudy Giuliani. Bratton was picked in part because de Blasio wanted to make a concession to the city elites who were wary of a liberal Democrat taking control of New York City for the first time since the early 1990s. Those who knew de Blasio intimately would say that he believed no progressive reform could occur unless crime remained low and the police were placated — Bratton, the law-and-order bulldog, would be de Blasio’s man.