In Depth April 1, 2010, 5:00PM EST

Bill Bratton, Globocop

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Bratton (second from right) has relied on CompStat, which uses real-time information about crime patterns and demands more accountability from local law-enforcement officers Larry Fink

Even for a diehard optimist like Bratton, Kabul will pose daunting challenges. Adam Ferguson/VII Mentor Program

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Term limits forced Jereissati to step down in 2002, and with him went police reform. "We were starting to have good results, but the governor that followed me decided to go with the resistors." Jereissati, who is now a senator, says: "We wanted to train people, not just make a beautiful plan. But it requires big changes to the system."

Bratton was brought to Caracas, Venezuela, in 2000 by a reform-minded mayor, Alfredo Peña, and his police commissioner, Ivan Simonovis, to help set up a new municipal police department. President Hugo Chávez had given more autonomy to Caracas and Peña, an early supporter. Bratton and Andrews knew they couldn't jump in with CompStat across the entire city. "You'd be kidding yourself," says Andrews. "You would be putting on a show, which CompStat can degenerate into. It has to be real, with accurate numbers."

They focused on a district called Catia, an impoverished barrio sprawling up steep slopes in the western part of Caracas. Bratton and Simonovis divided Catia into 12 precincts and found mid-level officers to run them. "The top ranks were very resistant to change," says Andrews. Simonovis arranged for the national police to train Catia's detectives. "There was nothing magical or Sherlock Holmes about it," Andrews continues. "It was just that homicides were being investigated for the first time." Over the next 18 months, Catia's murder rate declined by one-third, he says.

Then Chávez and Peña had a falling out. Graffiti appeared in Catia: "Bratton Go Home." After a brief and unsuccessful coup against Chávez in the spring of 2002, the experiment came to an end. Simonovis was jailed; Peña fled to Miami. "The whole thing fell apart," says Andrews. "Police reform requires constant presence. Institutions revert to form with dazzling speed."

In Chacao, another district of Caracas, the mayor tried to implement CompStat on his own. Leopoldo López came up against a systemic problem of a different kind. He had observed Bratton's work in Catia and knew the drill: He met with his top police officers every Tuesday at 6 am to review crime data. "I was totally committed to changing the way we were policing," he says. "In my district we could do the police management, get accurate measurements." What they didn't have was the support of the attorney general, he says, so "80% of the people we arrested were put back on the streets because of poor process or political reasons."

López, who has been barred from political office, still believes change is possible. "If we had a democracy, we would have been able to implement these reforms in the entire city of Caracas. I have no doubt about that." If...

Bratton says he understands the ifs, ands, and buts. Political institutions will be fragile; resources scarce. He will have to work neighborhood by neighborhood in these vast metropolises. He will have to adapt to local conditions that he is not even aware of yet. He will have only measured success. "But based on our experiences there is reason to be optimistic. Police can be agents of change," he says. "You have to start with optimism. You have to line up with political leaders who believe you can do good things. Then you have to ask: What is achievable?"

Berfield is an associate editor at Bloomberg Businessweek.