Good night and good luck

Daily Point

Bratton up and quits

At least this time NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton has a job waiting.

The announcement of his resignation as commissioner on Tuesday surprised not only the public, but also some of his closest aides. Spokesman Stephen Davis said Bratton had informed him about his decision to resign at 10 a.m. on Tuesday — just two hours before Bratton and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio made it official at a City Hall news conference.

Last week, Bratton reiterated his intention to leave the department before the end of 2017. That decision was reminiscent of two decades ago, when during his first term as commissioner under then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Bratton said he would leave for the private sector as soon as a million-dollar job offer came through. Giuliani fired him first.

It was not clear from Tuesday’s news conference whether Bratton’s job in the private sector had come through or whether de Blasio sped up the timetable, which in effect means he would have forced Bratton out of the NYPD.

Police sources say that was not the case, and that Bratton initiated his resignation. Bratton’s announcement came as protesters at City Hall demonstrated against him and then taunted de Blasio as he left the news conference. Indeed, the times have not been favorable to Bratton, whose signature broken-windows policing strategy that led to dramatic decreases in crime in the 1990s is seen as the reason thousands of African-American men sit behind bars.

Bratton’s successor, James O’Neill, is a department veteran and probably the best choice to succeed the commissioner. Bratton has known O’Neill since the days when he headed the transit authority. And when he returned as commissioner in 2014, Bratton promoted O’Neill to chief of department.

As for Bratton, he will become the head of risk management at Teneo, a global consulting firm. Bratton’s NYPD predecessor, Ray Kelly, also took a job in the private sector, as president of risk management at Cushman & Wakefield.

That job lasted about a year and a half.

Len Levitt

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Brownie Points

A pleasant surprise

It’s a website that’s sharp, functional and full of timely information and documents about the LIRR Expansion Project.

That’s why it’s so surprising to scroll to the small type at the bottom of each page of modernli.com and see that it’s sponsored by the MTA, the LIRR and NYS DOT — three organizations that don’t always lend themselves to those descriptions.

It’s no surprise, though, that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s name is prominent throughout the website. The addition of a third track along some 10 miles of the Main Line is a major priority of his second term. amodernLI.com has one goal: to clear the tracks of controversies and misunderstandings that doomed the last clumsy rollout.

And the website is making its case in real time on social media. @amodernli tweeted last week about a car that caught fire on a grade crossing in Westbury, causing morning rush-hour delays: “1 of Main Line’s 2 tracks damaged by a car this AM, reducing capacity drastically. A #3rdtrack would help trains move around problem.”

Now if the website could only find a way to use social media to fix the switches in Jamaica.

Rita Ciolli

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Pencil Point

Zika doping

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Bonus Point

Pokemon no go at hospital

Long Island’s Pokemon Go players had better hope they don't work for the region’s biggest employer.

Northwell Health, a system of 21 hospitals and more than 450 health facilities, is banning the game. Representatives from Northwell are in talks with Niantic, the software-development company behind the Pokemon GO app, to remove all of their locations from its database.

Using a cellphone’s GPS, the app plants virtual Pokemon creatures on a player’s screen as if they are there in reality to catch or train. Northwell sent a memo with the new policy to staff last week. “Due to the privacy and security risks associated with Pokemon Go, as well as the distracting nature of the game, employees are not permitted to install the app on Northwell Health mobile devices and should refrain from playing Pokemon GO in the workplace,” according to the Northwell email.

Patients, however, are still free to catch 'em all.

Amanda Fiscina