Job Tough, But New Chief Has Had Worse Challenge

Wife Safe Again After 2-Year Fight With Deadly Threat

By JIM KEVLIN

At the start of 2009, Gary O’Neill’s wife Trish began to feel pretty bad.
Referred to a New York City hospital, the couple learned her liver was failing, but that she was ineligible for a transplant.  After several harrowing hours, the hospital was convinced to give her that life-saving procedure.
“Her second ‘liver-versary’ was February of this year,” Oneonta’s interim police chief, who completes his second week “pouring oil on the waters” Friday, May 13, said in an introductory interview in his windowless office at 81 Main St.
The former Endicott police chief and Broome County undersheriff was brought to the City of the Hills for what many might consider a tough job – interim chief, to maintain stability after the turmoil of a police-brutality case that triggered  the resignation of Chief Joseph V. Redmond in mid-April. 
To O’Neill, though, there’s no comparison the experience he and Trish went through together.
“My goal is to show them” – his officers – “what I’m all about,” said O’Neill, who has a warm smile, but quickly settles into the brisk manner of a military man. “Once they recognize that, they’re going to get along with me fine.”
The top goal for a position he may hold for a year or more is to help OPD become an accredited police department, a designation conferred by the state Department of Criminal Justice Services once an entity has shown proficiency in 240 categories.
Mayor Dick Miller asked him to make that a priority.
When O’Neill was a lieutenant there in 1994, Endicott’s police department became the first in the Southern Tier to win accreditation, so he’s experienced the process from the ground up. 
An added bonus of accreditation, the chief said, is that DCJS auditors will return every five years to ensure the department is still performing up to standards.
That’s the umbrella concept for an action plan that includes: one,  training; two, “proving we are a professional police department,” and three, “making sure we don’t get our noses dirty again.”
That said, “you don’t change for the sake of change.”  He’s been reviewing the OPD’s policies and procedures, finds them sound, and intends to make sure everyone’s going by the book they’re familiar with.
Gary O’Neill was raised in Endicott, the one son in a Catholic family that included three girls.  “If I picked on my sisters too much, I got swatted,” he remembered, adding of his upbringing, “You respected people – and you called them ‘sir’.”
By the time he was a junior at Binghamton’s Catholic Central High School, he knew he wanted to be a policeman, and he joined the swim team to get in top shape by graduation.  His goal: “to help people.”
In 1974, he joined the Endicott police as a patrolman – starting salary, $8,900 – and over the next 30 years rose to patrol sergeant, detective, patrol lieutenant, detective lieutenant, captain and, for his final four years, chief.
He retired in 2004, joining the Broome County Sheriff’s Department as undersheriff.  He ran for sheriff in 2010; unsuccessfully, to his relief by the end of the campaign:  “Even I was sick of my commercial.”
Thinking back on his career, that night comes to mind when he was called to an apartment by a neighbor’s complaint of a loud party.
He knocked.  “The door’s unlocked.  Come on in,” said a voice behind the door.
“When I opened the door, I heard him ratchet a shotgun.”  O’Neill ordered the man sharply, with a voice of command, to drop his gun.  “I could have taken a shot; but he dropped his gun.”
No time to reflect.  He only had a split second to make a decision.  What did he learn?  “That my training was pretty good,” said the lawman.
During those years, he and Trish raised two children.  Daughter Ellen Saunders and her husband, Joe, live in Owego with their twin sons, Luke and Levi.  Jared, daughter-in-law Valerie and granddaughter Evelyn live in Johnson City.
He hadn’t seen the letters of recommendation Mayor Miller received, and didn’t know that State Police Maj. Kevin Molinari and others had praised O’Neill for the ability to “make tough decisions.”
“I’ve had to fire officers,” he allowed, with a bit of a pained expression.  “If a decision has to be made, it has to be made.”
That said, O’Neill said his first impression is that OPD “is operating correctly.  It’s not doing anything illegal.”
His approach, the new chief said, has been to support his officers, unless it can be shown they have breached that trust.  Then he has acted on that understanding.  And he intends to do that here.
And he encourages Oneontans, “If anyone has any questions, please call.  It’s easy to get in touch with me.  We will explain what we can legally explain.”