James O'Neill Leaving NYPD For Visa Security Job

NEW YORK — James O'Neill has a visa to the private sector. The outgoing NYPD commissioner is ending his 36-year police career to start a new job at Visa, the financial services firm said Tuesday.

O'Neill will start Dec. 2 as the credit card company's senior vice president and global head of physical security following his retirement from the police department, which he announced Monday.

"There is no higher priority at Visa than the safety and security of our people and assets," Lewis Love, Visa's senior vice president of corporate global services and O'Neill's future boss, said in a statement. "(O'Neill's) decades-long expertise in law enforcement, investigations and operations makes him an outstanding choice for this critical area for Visa."

The gig was attractive enough to lure O'Neill away from the NYPD after more than three decades in law enforcement and three years as the city's top cop. When he announced his resignation Monday, O'Neill said he was leaving for a private-sector opportunity he "couldn’t pass up."

O'Neill will oversee daily security operations to make sure Visa's assets and personnel are protected in the more than 200 countries where the California-based company operates, the firm said in a news release Tuesday night. He'll replace Don Hill, who is retiring after more than 15 years at Visa.

Asked this week why he decided to leave the nation's largest police force at a tumultuous time, O'Neill said there was not a single factor that motivated his decision.

"There’s a lot of things. I’m not getting any younger," he said at a Monday news conference. "... It was the right time. And I’m really gonna miss it."