James O’Neill, who rose through the ranks to become the NYPD chief of department, will be the next commissioner, Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the new conference.
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Bratton said in an interview with The New York Times on July 25 that he would not stay in his post as commissioner if de Blasio were re-elected to another term as mayor; however, he gave no hint he would step down so soon. As the highest ranking officer in the department, O’Neill will take the place of Bill Bratton, who is set to retire in September.
Bratton, who led the department in the 1990s before returning in 2014, noted that he was leaving at a fraught point for police-community relations but said he felt confident in the department’s future.
Bratton declined to say anything more about his new job, except that it was from a private firm not involved in policing, and that he would be remaining in NY.
Bratton who served as police commissioner in the 1990s returned to that role in 2014 to replace Raymond Kelly.
De Blasio noted that under O’Neill’s leadership, an amalgamation of neighborhood policing and quality of life policing will be employed.
It calls for officers to spend more time out of their patrol cars introducing themselves to shop owners and community members so they can collaborate on making the city safer.
Some critics are calling it a retread of old approaches and are skeptical it can work.
The incoming commissioner said it wouldn’t have happened without the mayor and city council approving the hiring of 1,300 new cops.
“It’s a racist mechanism of social control – they know it, we know it. Frederick Douglass said it back in 1845 when he said, ‘They whipped the slaves for the slightest offences to discourage them from committing larger ones.’ That exactly what we are seeing police do with broken windows”, says Joel Northam, one of the organizers of a coalition of police abolitionists who occupied the park.
Bratton is in his second stint as commissioner in NY.
“The fact that his team will continue to manage the NYPD is reassuring, but his unique voice will be missed”, she said.
“It’s a crisis in America at this moment”, Bratton said.
O’Neill, 58, a Brooklyn native, started as a patrolman in the transit system over 30 years ago.
“If your name wasn’t called, that’s a good thing because all those people had warrants for their arrest”, Green remembered Bratton told the group.
He was promoted to sergeant in 1987 and worked his way up to the commanding officer of the 25th and 44th precincts, which he said helped instill his belief in neighborhood policing to fix the sometimes fractured relationships between police and communities. He’s also been the Los Angeles police chief. Within a year, Bratton brought O’Neill on to his executive staff.
O’Neill will be expected to mend ties between the police and communities of color that have frayed in recent months, with the killing of Eric Garner and other outbreaks of violence.
“I think it’s also going to lower the racial profiling because they will get to know us as well”, said one Astoria resident.
Prosecutors say the officers accepted 100,000 U.S. dollars (£74,900) in free flights, prostitutes, meals and other bribes, and in return arranged for police escorts, special parking and gun permits. He had previously led the Boston Police Department.
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De Blasio denied any connection between the corruption probe or the protests and the commissioner’s departure.
