NEW YORK CITY — The shakeup of the NYPD continues with the departure of the head of the department's much-vaunted CompStat crime-fighting program.
John Bilich, the deputy commissioner for operations, has resigned. He is taking a position with newly-elected Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson, sources told "On The Inside."
Bilich is the third top official to exit the NYPD in the past week, coming on the heels of the departure of two NYPD so-called “Super Chiefs" — Chief of Detectives Philip Pulaski and Charles Campisi, the head of the Internal Affairs Bureau.
These veterans were given their marching orders last week in the first major effort by police Chief Bill Bratton to push out brass to boost morale, which has plunged — ironically at a time when crime has reached record lows.
Bilich’s departure was voluntary, but he clearly recognized that Bratton would likely want to place his own person in a post that he and his close friend, the late Jack Maple, created two decades ago.
Since then, CompStat, which stands for Computerized Statistics, has become the bedrock for crime reduction by bringing supervisors to headquarters where they're questioned about real-time crime in their neighborhoods.
The approach has been adopted by other city agencies and copied by police department's across the country.
Bilich, a former NYPD lieutenant with 22 years in the NYPD, returned to the department in March 2012 as the DCO after spending five years as deputy commissioner at the state’s Division of Criminal Justice and two more as the chief investigator at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, overseeing major crime investigations involving gangs, sex crimes, cyber and economic crime.
Bilich replaces Joseph Ponzi, a legendary supervisor involved in investigations of Mafia Cops, political corruption and the black market sale of human body parts.
Bratton has yet to name a successor for Bilich, source said.
At the DA's office, Bilich will oversee a unit that's composed largely of scores of retired cops who are used by prosecutors probing criminal cases.
Sources say Bratton has been holding internal focus groups to gauge the sentiment of New York's Finest, and he is expected to roll out policy changes by the end of next month for re-configuring the way the NYPD deals with the public and fights crime.
