An Interview With the Next Police Commissioner of New York City

William J. Bratton starts his second tour as commissioner of the New York Police Department in a little more than a week. Since his selection earlier this month by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, the usually gregarious police leader has shied away from the cameras, engaging in behind-the-scenes planning but making few public statements.

His first interview, a telephone conversation Friday with The New York Times, focused on his time as a security consultant and executive for an article about that underexamined part of his much-heralded career.

He was careful to avoid discussion of what he would do as commissioner - “You’re going to have to wait and see,” he said - but in the 19-minute discussion he provided some hints to the sort of leadership style he hoped to bring to Police Headquarters, 17 years after he left.

“You’ll be hearing a lot about collaboration, that’s going to be a major theme in the Police Department,” he said. “It echoes what the mayor is trying to do with city government. You’ll hear a lot of that terminology.”

It is a language and philosophy Mr. Bratton is comfortable with. His 2012 book, “Collaborate or Perish!,” written with Zachary Tumin, draws on Mr. Bratton’s experience as a police leader to provide advice to business readers on the benefits of teamwork and reaching out.

Indeed, almost immediately after being appointed by Mr. de Blasio, Mr. Bratton met with minority leaders and police reform advocates, seeking their views on the department’s stop-and-frisk practices and other contentious areas of policing.

Mr. Bratton said Friday that he was intensely focused on the transition at Police Headquarters. He said he has been working directly with the current commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly.

“Commissioner Kelly has been extraordinarily, extraordinarily helpful and available,” Mr. Bratton said.

“The commissioner and I met the other day and the transition could not be going more smoothly,” he said. “There is nothing that we have asked for that they have not responded to. They’ve been extraordinarily gracious.”

He heaped praise on Mr. Kelly’s tenure as commissioner, the longest in the department’s history. “He loves this city,” Mr. Bratton said, “he loves this department and he’s not going to do anything to impede the continued success of the N.Y.P.D. and the success of the city that he spent so much time serving.”

For Mr. Kelly, who first served as commissioner under Mayor David N. Dinkins, it is the second time he has handed over the reigns of the New York Police Department to Mr. Bratton, who replaced him after Rudolph W. Giuliani won the 1993 mayoral election on a law-and-order platform.

Mr. Bratton developed a national reputation for bringing down crime and found local fame as a man-about-town, mixing at Elaine’s, the now-defunct Upper East Side restaurant, with the city’s political and cultural leaders.

Despite having returned to the city from Los Angeles in recent years, Mr. Bratton said he has yet to find a replacement for that social scene.

“Sadly, for those who liked to patronize Elaine’s, they’re like the lost tribe of Israel,” he said. “They’re all still wandering around trying to find another Elaine’s. Nobody has found it yet.”

He said that when he becomes commissioner next month he will visit the reporters who cover the Police Department from a tight warren of offices on the second floor of Police Headquarters, a space known internally as the shack.

“I’ll stop by down at the shack,” he said. “Who knows, that might be the next Elaine’s.”