Police commissioner of NYC stepping down

Associated Press

NEW YORK

New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton is leaving the nation’s largest police force, after getting credit for keeping crime down but grappling with tension between officers and minority communities.

Bratton, whose departure was announced Tuesday, will leave next month to become a risk and security adviser at Teneo, a consulting firm. James O’Neill, the department’s top chief, will succeed him as commissioner.

During five years spanning two stints as the city’s top cop, Bratton has had an outsized impact on the New York Police Department. He noted that he was leaving at “a challenging time for police in America and New York, even though all indicators are pointing in the right direction.”

He said no department is better prepared to confront “the crises of race in America, crime in America, the threat of terrorism” and the divisiveness of the presidential election.

The announcement by Mayor Bill de Blasio took New Yorkers by surprise. Bratton, 68, said last week he would leave by the end of 2017 “when I find the right time,” though the mayor said Tuesday that Bratton had actually disclosed his plans more than three weeks ago.

De Blasio called Bratton’s contributions to the city “inestimable and extraordinary,” while heralding O’Neill as someone who would “take this department where it’s never been before” by leading a push toward neighborhood policing, or trying to build trust and working relationships between law enforcement and communities. O’Neill has been heavily involved in the city’s plans to shift toward that strategy during Bratton’s tenure.

“We’ve tried to redefine our relationship from being the police to being your police,” Bratton said.

Yet NYPD critics said Bratton hadn’t come close to ending discriminatory and abusive policing. They questioned whether elevating his second-in-command – a decision the mayor made without any public discussion or input – would make a difference.

“So-called ‘community policing,’ ‘training’ and the rhetoric of ‘police-community relations’ are no solution to the systemic problems with policing in this city and nation,” Communities United for Police Reform, a group that advocates for changing police practices, said in a statement.