NEW YORK--New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said on Tuesday he will retire in September, ending a four-decade career that earned him credit for pushing crime rates to historic lows but also criticism for his "zero tolerance" approach to policing.
Bratton, 68, will head a newly created risk division at the consulting firm Teneo, where he will advise chief executives on cyber crime and terrorism, he said during an interview on CNBC.
At a City Hall news conference, Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the man he tapped to head the nation's largest municipal police force in 2014, saying Bratton reduced violent crime while bolstering the department's extensive counterterrorism operation. "I wish I had words for what this man has achieved," de Blasio, a Democrat, said at the City Hall news conference.
Chief James O'Neill, 58, the department's top uniformed officer with more than 30 years on the force, will succeed Bratton as commissioner. O'Neill, a Brooklyn native, designed the department's neighbourhood policing program, aimed at improving relations between officers and the communities they patrol.
Widely seen as the face of U.S. policing, Bratton is a strong supporter of the "broken windows" theory, which holds that ignoring minor infractions such as vandalism and public drinking can lead to more serious crimes. During his first stint as New York's police commissioner from 1994 to 1996 under tough-on-crime Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Bratton put the theory into action by cracking down on petty crimes at a time when the city was a far more dangerous place.
He also introduced the CompStat system of real-time crime tracking, which has since been adopted by other police departments around the world. Bratton resigned in 1996 after his relationship with Giuliani grew strained over who deserved more credit for the drop in crime.
Supporters said Bratton's approach made New York the safest big city in the United States. But his detractors have attacked the "broken windows" strategy as discriminatory and heavy-handed.
