Jessica Tisch was sworn at the NYPD’s new commissioner Monday, the fourth top cop to assume the role during Mayor Adams’ first three years in office.
Mayor Adams praised Tisch “someone who understands what it is to lead” before swearing her in at NYPD headquarters. Tisch’s children and mother stood with her during the ceremony as the new commissioner held her grandmother’s Bible.
Adams pushed back on criticism that Tisch has never been a cop, insisting “a good manager can manage anywhere.”
Tisch, who has served as New York City’s sanitation commissioner since April 2022, is no stranger to the nation’s largest police force — she has worked in the past as a civilian NYPD employee, first as a counterterrorism analyst, then later as Deputy Commissioner Of Information Technology.
But she returns to a vastly different landscape starting today, one dominated by Adams, who has played an outsized role in major police department decisions. He has also been indicted on federal corruption charges— and even if he is ultimately acquitted Tisch could be out of a job if the mayor is not re-elected.
While shootings and murders continue to drop, the city is plagued by continued unprovoked attacks and a sense among some New Yorkers that they don’t feel safe, regardless of what the numbers show.
Police sources say they expect Tisch to require top brass to tone down their aggressive social media posture that has seen them criticize judges, prosecutors and reporters.
Tisch succeeds Interim NYPD Commissioner Thomas Donlon, who was involved in a high-profile kerfuffle with a top deputy commissioner at the New York Marathon earlier this month but otherwise kept a low profile since his Sept. 13 swearing in, lauding cops on social media but not granting interviews and deferring to other brass at press conferences.
Donlon’s predecessor, Edward Caban, resigned Sept. 12, just over a week after the feds confiscated electronics from Caban and four other top Adams administration officials in a coordinated early-morning operation that is part of a sprawling federal probe. Caban’s lawyer has said the feds have assured him Caban is not a target of the probe.
Many inside NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza, as well as outside observers, believed Caban, the city’s first Latino police commissioner, wasn’t fully in charge, with Adams and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks often calling the shots. Banks himself resigned last month.
Adams’ first police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, the first female top cop in city history, faced the same skepticism. She resigned in June 2023, with police sources saying she had grown tired of City Hall interference.
Tisch is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School and is a lifelong New Yorker.
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