SECURITY: Policing Your Homeland, Your City

Reading alternately like an official itemized report and a puffed-up résumé, this muddled book by former NYPD commissioner Safir sets out to offer an insider's tour of the cutting-edge law enforcement techniques that impressively reduced the crime rate in New York City. Although Safir covers a lot of ground, from the history of fingerprinting to computerized tracking of criminal patterns and the many applications of DNA analysis, his account is marred by cursory examination and sloppy writing. The book's real intention, apparently, is to put forward a thinly veiled defense of his management as commissioner from 1996 to 2000, but even as an apologia it offers almost nothing that has not already been said many times in his well-groomed public statements. Safir airs no dirty laundry, offers no personal information, entertains no ambiguity, skates over huge controversies (such as the Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo scandals, which received national attention) and admits to making no mistakes during his entire tenure as commissioner. He does, however, fill up many pages reminding readers of the exact percentage reductions in every criminal category in New York City under his leadership. This book should have been an important document, since Safir was, by many standards, an extremely successful commissioner and his personal and professional take on New York's success deserves to be heard; but as is, it's characterless and less than fully revealing. (July)