Bermuda and New York City are more similar than one might think, says NYC Police Commissioner William Bratton.

Speaking at a United Bermuda Party conference on Saturday, Mr. Bratton said that at first blush an Island paradise in the western Atlantic and a teeming metropolis that is America's largest city seem an odd match.

But density was one of the common traits the two places shared. "You have one of the most densely-populated countries in the world,'' Mr. Bratton said, while three million of New York's eight million people were jammed onto the island of Manhattan alone.

Both Bermuda and New York were multi-racial, and in both places, "by and large the races co-exist quite well together,'' he said at the Southampton Princess Hotel.

And in both places, crime and its adverse effect on quality of life were at the top of the political agenda.

Tourism was of key importance to both Bermuda and New York. Here, it accounted for half the foreign currency earnings. There, the 26 million visitors each year were the second-largest generator of jobs and money.

And Mr. Bratton, who has brought about a dramatic drop in crime statistics since he took over the NYC force in January of 1994, said Bermuda was "very much on the right track'' to achieving similar success under new Police Commissioner Colin Coxall.

He said he was impressed with Mr. Coxall's Police Service Strategy. In New York, Mr. Bratton aided his attack on more serious crime by targeting the way New Yorkers were treating city streets. Police cracked down on "minor'' offences like graffiti and public urination, which by 1990 had made New York City "something akin to a third world country'' in the way its streets looked.

And like Bermuda, New York was stressing "community policing,'' in which officers got out of their patrol cars and into the streets, he said.

Starting in the 1970s, police forces had stressed random patrols in cruisers and rapid response. But police grew distant from the public and ineffective, he said.

Societal and drug problems increased and violent crimes soared in the 1980s.

"We were being overwhelmed,'' Mr. Bratton said. "Reactive policing could not deal with it.'' Now, police have gone back to the old method, of walking the streets to prevent crime, he said.

"Police can and must get back into the game of reducing crime.'' Mr. Bratton said he had "re-engineered'' the 38,000-officer NYC Police, eliminating most of the top two or three levels of the organisation. And he replaced about 75 percent of the officers above the rank of captain, who in New York serve at the Commissioner's pleasure.

"They were not equipped mentally, or physically in many cases, to make the transition,'' he said.

He was decentralising the force to give more authority to the heads of each of the 76 precincts. Commanders are largely left alone to achieve goals set from above. "If they're successful, they get promoted. If they're not, they get replaced.'' When the FBI publishes crime figures next week for America's 180 largest cities, it will be the first time New York has had the largest drop in crime of all large cities, Mr. Bratton said.

The murder rate dropped 39 percent in the last 22 months, rapes were down eight percent, robberies 31 percent, felonious assaults 13 percent, burglaries 24 percent, grand larceny 24 percent, and car theft was down 36 percent, he said.

Mr. Coxall, who was in the audience for the luncheon speech, said that like Mr. Bratton, he is "re-engineering the Bermuda Police Service in line with the best practices nationally and internationally.'' He noted that his Police Strategy called for cutting senior Police management by 40 percent.

"We are already impacting on crime,'' Mr. Coxall said. "In my first six months, crime has gone down over-all by 13 percent, which is as much as I could have hoped for in such a short period.''