Outgoing NYPD chief to join consulting firm
New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton is resigning next month, it was announced on Tuesday amid a second day of protests outside of New York’s City Hall calling for his departure.
De Blasio, who worked in Dinkins’ administration, said Tuesday the new “neighborhood policing” will be more full-fledged and deliver on “a strategy we have never fully achieved”.
“As long as I’m mayor, I welcome him to continue being police commissioner”, said Mr.de Blasio, with Mr. Bratton to his right and Chief O’Neill at his left, at a previously scheduled news conference on Monday to tout new safety equipment for police officers.
City Councilman Vincent J. Gentile (Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, Dyker Heights): “It is with sadness that I learn of Commissioner Bratton’s departure from the NYPD”.
When his son went on a 9,000-mile bike ride, O’Neill cycled 1,000 miles down the West Coast with him, a source said.
Bratton, who led the department in the 1990s before returning in 2014, noted that he was leaving at “a challenging time for police in America and NY, even though all indicators are pointing in the right direction”. Bratton’s policing policies have greatly impacted the quality of life in Boston, Los Angeles and here in NY.
Mr O’Neill, a Brooklyn native, started as a police officer in the transit system over 30 years ago.
“I wish I had words for what this man has achieved”, de Blasio, a Democrat, said at the City Hall news conference.
While Bratton’s tenure has seen a dramatic reduction in the use of stop-and-frisk by NYPD officers, and seen historic lows in crime, it has also seen the cops walk free after the killings of both Eric Garner and Akai Gurley.
By October the neighborhood policing initiative would be rolled out to more than half the police command city wide, he said.
He was reappointed NY police chief in 2013 by Mayor Bill de Blasio and steps down as the United States is roiled by controversy over deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police and high-profile killings of officers.
Bill Bratton, 68, who has served twice as NY police commissioner, as well as the police chief in Los Angeles and Boston, was a key proponent of “zero tolerance” policing in the 1990s that slashed crime to historic lows.
“I will work very hard and will move very quickly to getting once again, legitimacy and trust between the citizens of this city who feel that they don’t have it between them and this police department”, Bratton said.
Mr Garner, who was black, was unarmed; officer Daniel Pantaleo, who put his arm around his neck, is white.
The tensions between the mayor and police eased, but officers have been under scrutiny this summer as concern about police-minority relations has welled anew. The department said that the officer perceived a possible threat to a sergeant when Blake placed a hand on his shoulder and that the officer had apologized.
Bratton early in the afternoon announced his plan to retire from the police force to seek out an opportunity that he hadn’t disclosed.
Meanwhile, the department has been facing an ongoing corruption probe that has spurred charges against two high-ranking officers and a businessman. “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”. Blake had asked for an apology-something he got from the mayor but did not get from the commissioner.
Bratton spoke about the success the department has had over the past 25 years in crime reduction, a department he has led twice.