In his first term as NYPD commissioner in the early 1990s, Bratton was credited with driving down crime with the widely-copied CompStat strategy.
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The announcement by Mayor Bill de Blasio took New Yorkers by surprise.
As chief of department, O’Neill is a known and liked entity.
Just yesterday, as The Guardian reported, a group affiliated with Black Lives Matter began occupying a park next to City Hall demanding that Bratton step down.
“There’s never a good time, but there’s a right time”, said the still-chief of the largest police force in the country, who refrained from providing any further details about his new job, saying only that he would remain in New York City. The report also found that the policy was costly to the city “in police time, in an increase of the number of people brought into the criminal justice system and, at times, in a fraying of the relationship between the police and the communities they serve”.
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton is stepping down as the city’s top cop, and he will relinquish the reins to Chief of Department James O’Neill in September, Mayor de Blasio announced Tuesday.
Bratton’s departure was to be announced Tuesday afternoon by Mayor Bill de Blasio, according to a person with direct knowledge of the planned announcement.
“It’s exciting for me”, Bratton said.
“It’s a crisis in America at this moment”, Bratton said. Teneo Risk is a new division of the firm focused on advising clients on key risk identification, prevention and response.
O’Neill used the neighborhood policing tactic throughout the precincts he headed and de Blasio says this strategy is critical reason for appointing O’Neill as Bratton’s replacement.
“It is now time for me to move on”, Bratton told a news conference, promising a seamless transition in September to a “capable, energetic and creative” team.
“He was a kid from Dorchester who came up in a police department that had a completely different vision”, said former Boston police Commissioner Edward F. Davis. The numbers don’t lie: Crime is down and stop-and-frisk is all but gone.
Bratton who served as police commissioner in the 1990s returned to that role in 2014 to replace Raymond Kelly.
However, there is little evidence that “broken windows” policing, which critics say ends up unfairly targeting minorities and poorer communities, actually contributed to the crime reduction.
He called Bratton’s achievements during the past 31 months during his second stint as commissioner, “literally inestimable and extraordinary”.
O’Neill embraced de Blasio before taking the podium and joked about another aspect of his background. “In each and every one of them I’ve gone to, people tell us ‘we want policing that’s something that’s not done to us, but done with us.’ And now this is what’s happening and it seems to be working”.
Calling his accomplishments “literally inestimable and extraordinary”, de Blasio credited Bratton with pushing the city’s crime levels to historic lows and working to fix relations between the department and the communities it protects.
The nation’s wisest and most preeminent policing pro is disgusted and frustrated with an often insane and unbalanced conversation about policing in our city and across the nation.
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Here are six things to know about the new commissioner.
