Law enforcer who cleaned up NY

Bill Bratton knows how to capture the headlines as well as criminals.

"We will fight for every street, every block, every house and we will win," he declared within days of being made New York's top policeman in 1994.

The city's press delighted in calling his remarks "Churchillian". The public were even more thrilled when, within months, the muggers and petty criminals who had plagued their lives for years were in full retreat.

For the tough Irish cop who had grown up in Boston, tackling New York's law-and-order problem was the vindication of his crime-fighting theories.

But his triumph also brought him into conflict with the man who had hired him, the equally hard-nosed mayor Rudolph Giuliani. In the end, 54-year-old Mr Bratton was the loser.

Joining the Boston police force in 1970, he had become the second-highest-ranking officer by the age of 30. In the early 1990s he arrived in the Big Apple for the first time, taking charge of New York's transport police.

The job lasted barely a year before he was back in Boston on a path that would take him to become the city's police commissioner by 1993. But he was soon heading back to New York.

For New York this meant a campaign against people at the bottom of the social ladder. The "squeegee merchants" were among the first to go, along with the graffiti sprayers, street prostitutes and fare dodgers.

In two years, crime was down by nearly 40 per cent and murders cut by half. Many of the petty criminals hauled off the streets were also wanted for more serious offences.

But there were reports that Mr Bratton was spending too much time being entertained by businessman friends. The mayor ordered an investigation but Mr Bratton resigned first, saying his £90,000 salary was inadequate, and returned to Boston. Two years ago he teamed up with the security consultants Kroll Associates.

He is now said to be beefing up security at Boston's Logan Airport, where two of the planes hijacked on 11 September took off. His visit to Britain is a rare return to the limelight.