Britain's most wanted man: Bill Bratton’s crime-fighting credentials

He's credited as the police chief who cleaned up NYC and his policies are being championed by David Cameron. But could Bill Bratton head up the Met? Yes - in theory, says Rupert Cornwell

Oh the horror of it: yet another of those vulgar Americans telling us how to run our affairs. We may have had the country's worst rioting in a generation, an urban mayhem that has had the entire world revising its views of ancient, so-civilised Britain – but do we really need someone who might have just stepped out of LA Heat to cure the sickness of our inner cities? To which the considered answer is: we could do a heck of a lot worse.

At the time of writing it appears that Bill Bratton, the former police chief of Boston, New York and Los Angeles, will not become the next commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London. In the view of Theresa May, if not David Cameron, you have to be a British citizen to be in charge of Scotland Yard, while the UK police establishment is aghast at the notion a foreigner might be put in charge. "I'm not sure I want to learn about gangs from an area of America that has 400 of them," Sir Hugh Orde, a leading candidate for the Met job, sniffed to The Independent on Sunday.

In fact the number of gangs in Los Angeles County, is estimated at more than 1,000, with about half of them in the city proper, whose police department Bratton led between 2002 and 2009. But there is no doubt the man the tabloids have dubbed the "US super-cop" is already an important adviser to the Prime Minister in the war against the punks. And understandably so.

British gangs consciously model themselves on their US counterparts, at least as they appear on imported American TV series; and probably no one is more aware of the cultural similarities and differences between them than Bratton. Few of America's finest can boast the honorary title of Commander of the British Empire on their CV. The CBE Bratton was awarded in 2009 was in recognition of decades of promoting police co-operation between the two countries.

By then he had put together a glittering career in American law enforcement. He first joined the police in his native Boston in 1970, when he was 22. Just 10 years later, he was appointed the youngest ever executive superintendent, the police department's second-highest post – only to be dismissed when he confessed that he really wanted was the very top job of commissioner.

In the event he achieved that goal in 1993, but held it for only a year before being enlisted by New York's new mayor Rudolph Giuliani to the country's most prestigious and legend-encrusted police post of all, commissioner of the NYPD. But neither man was exactly a shrinking violet, and it was almost inevitable they would clash.

Bratton delivered what he promised, a remarkable reduction in New York's crime rate. But he was forced out by the mayor in 1996, amid a furore over a book deal. The volume, modestly entitled The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic, duly appeared in 1998, and its very first sentences give a flavour of the man. "Don't stick your neck out, that's the first principle of running a police organisation. Never say your goals out loud, you'll only look bad when you don't achieve them." But, Bratton added in the very next breath, "That's not me."

After his abbreviated stint in New York, Bratton moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a consultant for the private security firm Kroll, before being named in 2002 to surely the hottest police seat in America – chief of an LAPD notoriously tainted by corruption, distrusted in the neighbourhoods, and with a reputation for racism fuelled by the 1992 riots and the botched O J Simpson prosecution three years later.

But Bratton succeeded in Los Angeles as he had in New York. His methods were similar, based on the so-called "broken windows" theory, whereby petty crime and vandalism, if left untackled, will inevitably breed more serious crime and violence in the inner cities. To impose order, he put more police on the streets and embraced a "zero-tolerance" approach to offenders, but also reached out to local ethnic communities, above all by diversifying the force.

The LAPD that arrested and beat up the black motorist Rodney King on 3 March 1991 was nearly two-thirds white; today that ratio has been almost reversed. Bratton took his case in person to the ordinary people he was entrusted with protecting. "You have to present a face of both confidence and caring," he told Time magazine yesterday, so that "the public comes to know the chief of police... as someone they trust, somebody they have confidence in not just day-to-day but when there is a crisis. And to do that, you can't just do it in on TV or newspapers, you've got to get out there and press the flesh."

The formula worked. The number of gang-related crimes fell sharply, and in 2007 Bratton became the first chief in a generation to be nominated for a second term, despite criticism that he was too fond of junkets (to the extent of being out of the city on police or personal business for a total of four months in 2005 alone). But the LA politicians didn't mind: if the rest of America and the world was treated to some rare good news about their city, so much the better.

And Bratton was one of those figures you so rarely find on the other side of the Atlantic: a self-promoter maybe – but one able to navigate the often treacherous shoals where policing, politics and the media intersect, indeed one who positively relishes being centre stage. Such traits are often scorned in Britain. In the US, they are part of the national cultural DNA.

Nor has his private life exactly been self-effacing. Bratton has been married four times, since 1999 and currently to the glamorous and dauntingly accomplished Rikki Klieman, actress, trial attorney, and fast-talking TV legal analyst (another uniquely American combination). In her own book, Fairy Tales Can Come True, she writes of her first meeting with Bratton in a restaurant.

He "rose from his seat and kissed me on the cheek. He smiled. 'You look so beautiful,' he said. 'If you were single, I'd marry you.' 'You should call me for lunch,' I said. By the time I got back to the office, he had called." As pick-up lines go, a bit corny perhaps – but far suaver than anything a Knacker of the Yard might come up with.

And, given the astonishing drop in crime America is experiencing, they are also eminently forgivable. The country's violent crime rate is at its lowest in 40 years; in the past two years alone, according to the FBI, it has fallen by some 10 per cent, comprehensively disproving the assumption that recession and unemployment beget higher crime. True, the murder rate remains far higher in the US than in Britain, but today you are more likely to be mugged, assaulted, or burgled in London than in New York or Los Angeles. And there hasn't been a major urban riot in the US for a decade now.

Countless explanations have been put forward for the improvement: America's soaring incarceration rate, the aging of the population, the greater availability of abortion, even reduced levels of lead poisoning. But some credit, surely, is due to the methods championed by Bill Bratton and others. So why not give them a shot in Britain as well?

Brought in from abroad

By Alice-Azania Jarvis and Gillian Orr

Bob Kiley

In 2001, Bob Kiley, a former CIA agent, was brought in to become both chairman of the now-defunct London Regional Transport and Commissioner of Transport for London. He was given a $4m four-year contract but was sacked from the regional post within a few months after clashing with Transport Secretary Stephen Byers. Ken Livingstone kept him on in London, extending his contract in 2004. The two campaigned vociferously against Public Private Partnerships. In 2006, Kiley stood down, assuming a consultant role.

Michael Kaiser

Nicknamed "the turnaround king" for his work at the Kansas City Ballet, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and American Ballet Theatre, New Yorker Kaiser was brought in to lead the Royal Opera House in 1998. In the throes of major renovation, and faced with a projected £18m deficit, the West End institution was in crisis. Kaiser deftly guided it through the renovations and reputation repair. Within two years, the deficit had been paid off, the new buildings opened, and a new fund established to protect its future.

Duncan Fletcher

The England football team has had more than its fair share of would-be "saviours" from overseas. When Sven-Göran Eriksson, fresh from his success with Lazio, was appointed manager, hopes were high – but his activities off the pitch dominated press attention. Similar hopes were placed on Fabio Capello, but the team's poor performance in the 2010 World Cup left many disappointed. Zimbabwean Duncan Fletcher has had more success with the England cricket team; he's widely credited with revitalising their fortunes when he took over in 1999.

Angela Ahrendts

The daughter of a former model, Angela Ahrendts, who hails from America, had worked at Donna Karan, Henri Bendel and Liz Claiborne before joining Burberry as chief executive in 2006. Taking over from Rose Marie Bravo she was tasked with overhauling the brand's image following its adoption as the baseball cap of choice among football fans and soap stars. She did just that, as Burberry became a byword for Brit cool, and the company achieved record profits.

Arnaud de Puyfontaine

Frenchman Arnaud de Puyfontaine was brought in as chief executive of The National Magazine Company, the struggling UK subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation in 2009. He'd worked previously for Nicholas Sarkozy, on the challenges facing France's press. Within a year, the combined circulation of the company's magazines (which include Esquire and Harper's Bazaar) were up 1.3 per cent. NatMags has since merged with Hachette to create Hearst Magazines UK.