Why It's Easier to Sympathize With Boston's Police Chief than New York's

Just like 9/11 forever changed policing in New York, the Boston marathon bombing redefined the way Police Commissioner Ed Davis sees his city. "When you’re dealing with what we’ve been dealing with in Boston – homegrown violent extremists that have been radicalized on the Internet – a whole new system has to be thought about," he said during an conversation with New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and the Aspen Institute’s Walter Isaacson at CityLab on Tuesday.

With a terrorist attack looming in recent memory, Davis may have extra latitude with the public on how they see his department’s policing tactics. Kelly has no such luck. In the decade since he took office following 9/11, he has been hounded in the press for strategies including stop-and-frisk, expanded surveillance, and use of military-like technology. The response seems to have affected him: In a thirty-minute interview on Tuesday, he had his defenses up almost immediately, ready to punch back at any question about privacy or civil liberties.