When Guiliani was Mayor every fare beater on the subway was arrested and brought to the precinct to be fingerprinted and to be checked as to whether they had outstanding arrest warrants.. The criminals began to leave their guns and knives at home...it was too risky to carry them.
Guiliani had every welfare recipient fingerprinted. The welfare roles dropped dramatically. I think the drop was from 1,300,000 to 600,000. There were lots of double-dippers collecting welfare apparently and also a lot of working people who lied about their status.
Without Bratton though it could never have been done. Bratton made the police be more productive than they had been.
Yet he has gone on the limb defending one category of criminals: illegal aliens. His comments on the fence were absurd.