William J. Bratton was named police commissioner of New York City for the second time on Thursday. But it is a different place than the crime-ravaged city he came to in 1994. And he said he was going to be a different kind of commissioner, overseeing a different kind of policing.

“In this city, I want every New Yorker to talk about ‘their police’, ‘my police,’ ” Mr. Bratton said after his appointment was announced by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, before reading from a children’s book about police work he said he had cherished since he was 9.

In 1994, the message was different: “We will fight for every house in the city; we will fight for every street; we will fight for every borough,” he said at the time. “And we will win.”

Back then, the hard-driving, press-savvy Mr. Bratton could be found dining out among city luminaries, and on the covers of newspapers and national magazines. He received a lot of credit for historic drops in crime rates, even as the trends in New York coincided with those around the country. Such prominence drove a very public wedge between him and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former prosecutor, who pushed him out just two years after appointing him. The mayor has the full authority to hire and fire the commissioner.