The incoming NYPD commissioner is already getting slammed by police reform activists

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Chief of Department James O'Neill will succeed Bill Bratton as New York Police Department Commissioner after Bratton steps down in September, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday.

At a news conference, de Blasio praised O'Neill, a 58-year-old Brooklyn native, as a leader in the movement to reduce tension between police departments and minority communities. Police reform activists, however, are skeptical that the new commissioner would enact meaningful systemic change.

De Blasio said O'Neill, who will command the country's largest police force, is "one of the best-prepared incoming police commissioners this city has seen."

Bratton has previously said that he appointed O'Neill chief of department because of his skills in communicating with both officers and citizens. Shortly after he began the job, protests erupted over the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and two officers were shot in Brooklyn.

"Right from the onset, the weight was tremendous," O'Neill told The Wall Street Journal in July.

Under O'Neill, the department has begun to adopt a new model throughout many of its precincts in which officers are evaluated based on how effectively they reduce crime conditions, not the number of arrests they make. Officers are asked to set aside time in their shifts to built relationships with the community.

O'Neill will assume his new role in September. He will be succeeded as chief of department by Carlos Gomez, currently chief of patrol.

On Tuesday, O'Neill emphasized the "neighborhood policing" initiative he helped develop as chief of department. The model will roll out in dozens of precincts in the fall and is aimed at "lowering crime, but not at the expense of losing the vital support of the people we are sworn to protect and serve," O'Neill said.

Mixed reactions

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Already, activists are skeptical of O'Neill's appointment and wary of the police department's promises to focus on neighborhood policing and rebuilding relationships with communities.

"There should be no delusion of systemic change at the NYPD under [O'Neill's] tenure," Mandela Jones of Communities United for Police Reform said in a statement.

Bratton's "commitment to the discriminatory broken windows policing" left New Yorkers — particularly those in communities of color — susceptible to abuse by police, according to Jones. O'Neill's experience as chief of department and his selection by de Blasio and Bratton have prompted doubt that substantial reforms within the department can occur.

"Talk is cheap and our communities are tired — so-called 'community policing,' 'training' and the rhetoric of 'police-community relations' are no solution to the systemic problems with policing in this city in nation," Jones said.

On Monday, activists from Millions March NYC occupied Manhattan's City Hall Park to protest discrimination in policing and demand that de Blasio fire Bratton, provide NYPD-funded reparations to survivors and victims of police brutality, and redirect the police department's funding into black and brown communities.

The group celebrated Bratton's resignation Tuesday, but noted that the department still has work to do to eliminate the "racist practice" of Bratton's "broken windows" policing, in which officers crack down on low-level offenses in an effort to deter larger ones.

"Bratton's removal is but one part of the first of our three demands," Millions March NYC said in a statement. "This is only the beginning. We won't stop until the abolition of the entire policing institution."

Beyond the skepticism of local activist groups, O'Neill's career is not with blemishes. In 2008, while he was chief of the department's narcotics division, he was transferred out of the unit when a group of officers was caught paying informants with drugs, according to The New York Times.

But Bratton has praised O'Neill repeatedly. He hinted in July that O'Neill was a serious candidate to take over his job when he left.

"Basically what I have worked on all these months is giving the mayor the options when I leave to pick someone in the department," Bratton said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "[O'Neill] would certainly be one of them ... he has a full understanding that to be successful at crime reduction you need cooperation with the public."

Even before Bratton announced his pick, the leaders of police organizations reacted positively to the possibility of O'Neill as commissioner.

"He's a solid guy," Roy Richter, president of the Captains Endowment Association, told the New York Daily News. "He would be a good selection if that's who the mayor chooses and if the position becomes open."

Lou Turco, president of the Lieutenants Benevolent Association, agreed.

"He'd be an excellent choice to be a police commissioner," he told the Daily News. "He's a cop's cop — 100%."

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