HIS YEAR OF PRIDE AND PAIN
‘It takes a little piece out of you, too.’
He speaks equally emotionally about the death of Tuozzolo, who was shot to death in the Bronx last Nov. 4 while responding to a report of domestic violence.
“You take responsibility,” O’Neill says. “You’re ultimately accountable — and then you have to speak with the family and talk to them and let them know what happened. A lot of it takes place that day in the hospital. It’s an incredibly emotional experience.
“It’s devastating to the families, obviously, and it takes a little piece out of you, too.”
That compassion was also on hand, but less welcome, after the death of Danner in her Castle Hill, Bronx, apartment, which he was quick to criticize — drawing the ire of some members of the rank and file and union leaders.
Sgt. Hugh Barry was part of a team of officers responding to a 911 call from a neighbor, who said Danner was behaving erratically. Barry talked Danner into dropping the scissors she was holding, but then Danner, a diagnosed schizophrenic, swung a wooden bat at Barry. Instead of backing out of the rear bedroom, using his Taser or calling for the Emergency Service Unit, he shot Danner to death. Barry, on the force eight years, was charged in May with second-degree murder.
Critics have said that O’Neill shaped the narrative of the investigation when he publicly said police failed to follow proper protocol for dealing with the emotionally disturbed.
“What is clear in this one instance: We failed,” O’Neill said at the time.
He knows many on the force still disagree.
“I love being a cop,” he says. “I love being around cops. But in this position I have to tell the truth.”
Ed Mullins, head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said O’Neill spoke too quickly and without full knowledge of the facts.
“It was an amateur mistake,” Mullins maintains. “As far as the rank and file go, they think O’Neill failed.”
‘We gotta get this guy’
Still, his time on the streets and man-ofthe-people rep — not long after being tapped as commissioner, he tweeted a side-by-side picture of himself and “Blue Bloods” star Tom Selleck sporting a lookalike ’stache — made him a popular choice for the top NYPD job when he was sworn in Sept. 19, 2016.
O’Neill, who’s called Jimmy by friends, cut his teeth in the department, joining the Transit Police Department in 1983. That unit, along with the Housing Police Department, merged with the NYPD.
In 2003, he had a narrow miss with an armed gunman while working as commander of the 44th Precinct in the Bronx.
The suspect turned and fired, just missing the pair of Bronx cops, Sgt. Kevin Costello and then-Inspector O’Neill, who had been chasing him inside a building on Shakespeare Ave.
Costello fired back, but no one was hit. They gave chase and arrested the shooter.
“How do you feel during the moment?” O’Neill asks in hindsight. “You feel, ‘All right, we gotta get this guy.’ But I think a little bit afterwards, it starts to sink in, the reality of what just happened.”
O’Neill’s career stalled when then-Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly in 2008 removed him from his post as citywide narcotics commander following allegations that cops were stealing seized drugs to pay off informants and cash from dealers to pay off tipsters.
But O’Neill was resurrected when Bill Bratton became commissioner for a second time, in 2014. Bratton promoted him to chief of patrol, then to chief of department. When Bratton told Mayor de Blasio in 2016 that he’d be retiring, he pushed for the mayor to replace him with O’Neill. The mayor did just that. O’Neill, 60, calls his relationship with the mayor “great,” and the feeling appears to be mutual.
“Decades in the department and years on patrol helped him shape the concept of neighborhood policing,” the mayor told The News. “It’s his communitybased approach to public safety that’s going to make our city even safer.”
In the years since O’Neill led the Bronx precinct and was caught in gunfire, violent crime has continued to plummet.
In 2003, 596 people were murdered city-