Former New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton tells NBC New York that he has accepted a job as a consultant in Britain to try to help control gang violence there.
Bratton said he spoke to Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday and expects to begin the job soon.
The post will be as a short-term consultant, and is not specifically aimed at addressing the violence that has recently erupted there. Bratton tells NBC New York he won't begin the work for at least a week or so. The complete details of the arrangement are still being sorted out.
His compensation is still being worked out, but Bratton said he doesn't expect it to be "a lucrative assignment."
"The British government, like our own, is really working with bare bones over there ... so any fees will not be significant," he said.
The project will focus on the broader problem of gang violence rather than immediate solutions to the violent riots now going on.
Hundreds of people have been arrested in London and elsewhere amid rioting that began after a fatal police shooting.
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The former commissioner, who also lead police departments in Boston and Los Angeles, says he is not moving overseas permanently.
Cameron ignited rumors that Bratton might be a contender for commissioner of Scotland Yard after he told Parliament last month that non-British candidates deserved consideration for the post. There have been objections about that since then, and Bratton said Friday he understood that reaction.
"If there was a Brit trying to take the position of New York City police commissioner, I might raise a few questions and eyebrows around that also," he said.
Still, Bratton said, he might have taken the job and believes he would have been good at it.
"I would have seriously contemplated it," he said.
Bratton was New York City police commissioner to then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani from 1993 to 1996, overseeing Giuliani's crime-fighting efforts during a time when murders and other violent crimes plummeted.
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