BILL BRATTON’S favourite childhood book was called “Your Police”. It has long been out of print, but it described the New York Police Department (NYPD) for little folks, and the commissioner (who is on his second stint in the job, after a highly successful first in the 1990s) still carries it round like a talisman. The last paragraph of the book begins: “We must always remember that whenever you see a policeman, he is your friend.” For many New Yorkers, particularly minorities, that is the last thing they think.

Most New Yorkers feel safe in the city: last year the murder rate was the lowest since before John Kennedy was president. But only half think the police are doing a good job. According to the NYPD’s own research, whiter, wealthier neighbourhoods have more positive opinions of the police, and blacks and Latinos have poorer ones. The lowest approval ratings are in the areas with the most violent crime. This is not rocket science, but at least it is spurring Mr Bratton and his boss Bill de Blasio, New York’s mayor, to try to change perceptions of the force.

Morale is also low on the police side. Relations between the mayor and rank-and-file officers have been fraught for nearly a year. Last summer Eric Garner, an unarmed African-American, died at the hands of a white policeman. Thousands of New Yorkers took to the streets to protest about a grand jury’s decision in December not to indict the officer who caused Mr Garner’s death, and a deranged man shot two cops dead in apparent revenge as they sat in their patrol car eating lunch.

The police say they feel unsupported by City Hall. In an internal police-department survey in 2014, around 70% said that fear of being sued kept them from making lawful interventions against criminal activity on the streets. Many of the 35,000-strong force feel ill-prepared and undervalued.

So on June 25th the mayor and the commissioner unveiled their neighbourhood policing plan: “One City: Safe and Fair—Everywhere”. It has five elements, “the five Ts”, which sounds more like a Motown group than a police plan: tactics, technology, training, terrorism and trust. The idea is to keep crime low, continue to deter terrorists and, meanwhile, improve relations between police and New Yorkers. Other cities, such as long-struggling Camden, New Jersey, have embraced the same ideal of community policing and have seen impressive drops in crime. New York tried a version of it for a spell in the early 1990s, but ultimately abandoned it.

This time round, the idea is for officers to spend more time getting to know the people who live and work in the areas they serve. Some cops will be exempt from responding to 911 calls so that they can concentrate on building trust. Others will be moved out of desk jobs. Mr de Blasio called it a return to “the cop on the beat”. There will be more of them: Mr Bratton, after months of begging, at last persuaded Mr de Blasio to budget for 1,300 new officers.

Mr Bratton predicts that by getting close to the public the police will learn which people are reliable informants, and thus who the criminals are. Information-gathering is key. Each cop will be given a smartphone and each patrol car will have a tablet, allowing officers to get real-time analysis and intelligence.

Training will be overhauled. All uniformed officers will have annual sessions and the chance to attend special courses related to their assignments. They will learn, among other things, how to deal with the mentally ill. New recruits will be trained differently, too. Rookies used to be sent almost unsupervised to “impact zones” with high crime; now they will be spread across the city.

“Your Police”, after describing each officer as a friend, goes on to say: “He is there to protect you. He has dedicated his life to the preservation of the laws and the property and the civil rights of the people in the community he serves. He would not hesitate to save your life at the cost of his own.” Perhaps Mr Bratton’s favourite book should be reprinted, too.