Man behind zero tolerance tipped to be agency chief

The man tipped as the top candidate for Britain's new FBI-style agency made his name fighting crime in America's biggest cities.

After serving in Vietnam, William Bratton, 57, rose through the ranks in his hometown of Boston to be made commander.

In 1994, he was poached by New York's mayor Rudolph Giuliani to be police chief in a city that then had one of the worst crime rates in the US. The men shared a belief in the "broken windows" theory of policing, which holds that no crime is too lowly to go unpunished.

It was the beggars and "squeegee merchants" who were targeted first, while senior officers faced weekly briefings in which pages of statistics exposed their failings. Within two years, major crime was cut by 33 per cent and murder rates by half. Times Square was famously cleared of pushers and prostitutes.

New York also exposed Bratton's love of publicity, with tabloids dubbing him "Broadway Bill". Giuliani was irritated when Time magazine put Bratton on the cover and by the end of 1997, he was gone.

After working as a consultant for crisis management firm Kroll, he took over Los Angeles Police Department 18 months ago, when it was reeling froma series of scandals.

Critics point out that crime in New York continued to fall long after Bratton left. He has also made enemies in LA by threatening a referendum if the city council fails to fund an extra 3,000 police officers.