Bratton and L.A. crime the talk of the town in London

Lots of stories this weekend about former LAPD chief William Bratton and the political squabbles that have formed around him since the prime minister over there, David Cameron, suggested he would like Bratton to lead the London police. The idea didn't even fly in Cameron's cabinet and was even less popular with the opposition Labour party. Now it seems Bratton will advise the government in the wake of the riots, and he gave an interview to The Guiardian that returned some of the verbal barbs thrown his way (and at American violence and at Los Angeles.) Bratton:

"The [London police force] is having its share of issues and leadership crises, certainly. It is a mirror image of when I went into the NYPD and LAPD, and both those cities turned out quite well. I've been an outsider in every department I've worked in. Bureaucrats change processes, leaders change culture. I think of myself as a transformational leader who changes cultures."

Sir Hugh Orde, president of Britain's Association of Chief Police Officers, on Bratton's L.A. tenure in The Independent:

"I am not sure I want to learn about gangs from an area of America that has 400 of them. It seems to me, if you've got 400 gangs, then you're not being very effective. If you look at the style of policing in the States, and their levels of violence, they are so fundamentally different from here."

London mayor Boris Johnson, to the BBC via the New York Times:

“They have a murder rate in New York about four times the rate in London, the Los Angeles rate is even higher, the gang problem is considerably worse over there.”

Last weekend at LA Observed: British prime minister wanted Bratton for Scotland Yard, paper says