Jessica Tisch, center, has run the Sanitation Department since April 2022, pushing for clean streets as New York City emerged from the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic.
Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

Jessica Tisch Is Appointed N.Y.P.D. Commissioner

Ms. Tisch, a member of a prominent New York family who has held several positions in city government, will take over the nation’s largest police department.

by · NY Times

Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday named Jessica S. Tisch, the sanitation commissioner, to head the New York Police Department, the latest shake-up in an administration that has been rocked by federal investigations and resignations.

Mr. Adams disclosed the appointment in the City Hall rotunda on Wednesday during what had been billed as a news conference about the budget. His decision followed the resignation of Edward A. Caban on Sept. 12 and the subsequent appointment of Thomas Donlon as interim commissioner, both of whom are under the scrutiny of federal investigators.

The announcement, made as Mr. Donlon and Ms. Tisch looked on with other officials, came after weeks of speculation over who would permanently run the nation’s largest police force. Mr. Adams said that Ms. Tisch, a former deputy police commissioner who once oversaw technology at the department, would start Monday. Ms. Tisch, who is part of the New York family that owns the Loews Corporation conglomerate and co-owns the New York Giants, will be the second female commissioner.

“I need someone who can take the Police Department into the next century,” Mr. Adams said at City Hall. “I need a visionary.”

Ms. Tisch, 43, has run the Sanitation Department since April 2022, pushing for clean streets as the city emerged from the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic, not to mention becoming internet famous as a scourge of rats. She has never been a beat officer — the role of police commissioner is a civilian post — but has held positions throughout city government, and the Sanitation Department has its own police unit with about 300 officers.

On Wednesday, Ms. Tisch said that she was proud of what the Sanitation Department had achieved and praised the police officers she would soon supervise.

“I’ve watched with pride over the past three years as you’ve driven down crime in many categories to prepandemic levels, both in our subway system and on our streets, and I know it has literally taken blood, sweat and tears,” Ms. Tisch said.

Ms. Tisch has received praise from the mayor and his circle for her efforts to move trash bags from curbs into cans and to implement curbside composting. Mr. Adams did not announce her replacement at the Sanitation Department.

Ms. Tisch has a reputation as a demanding boss unafraid to rethink government. She holds three Harvard degrees, including an M.B.A. and a law degree. She will take over a department that has about 55,000 civilian and uniformed employees, and that has been closely linked to the mayor, a former captain. Under him, several associates have been appointed to top positions and some have made headlines for tangling with reporters, insulting political leaders who have criticized the department or being accused of abusing their authority.

John Miller, a former deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said Ms. Tisch was a tough leader who would require subordinates to run the department effectively.

“She can rub people the wrong way, but she gets things done,” he said. “And when you’re in a government bureaucracy, getting things done means getting people to move faster than the accepted pace of bureaucracy.”

Among her achievements as a deputy commissioner, Mr. Miller listed her role in the creation of the Domain Awareness System, which assimilates data from several surveillance tools — license plate readers, closed-circuit television streams, facial recognition software and phone call histories — and uses it to identify people.

Ms. Tisch was a close-to-home choice for police commissioner, allowing Mr. Adams to bypass a national search as he faces not only his indictment but a re-election campaign next year. She is the fourth police commissioner since the mayor took office in January 2022. The last time there were even three in a single term was under Mayor James J. Walker, who resigned in 1932 while being investigated for corruption.

Keechant Sewell, the first woman commissioner, resigned in 2022, frustrated that the mayor had not given her enough autonomy. Her replacement, Mr. Caban, stepped aside in September after federal agents seized his cellphone in one of the five criminal investigations that have upended City Hall. His lawyers have said that he is not a target.

Mr. Adams, who was indicted in September on federal corruption charges, then appointed Mr. Donlon on Sept. 12. A week after his appointment, Mr. Donlon, a former F.B.I. agent, disclosed in a late-night news release that federal agents had seized documents that he had kept for more than 20 years.

Despite the looming investigation, Mr. Donlon, 71, had told friends and members of the department that he wanted to stay in the job permanently. On Wednesday, Mr. Adams said that Mr. Donlon would remain in the administration, working under Chauncey Parker, the deputy mayor for public safety. The mayor did not specify Mr. Donlon’s new role.

Many inside and outside the Police Department said they hoped that the appointment of Ms. Tisch would end the uncertainty that has surrounded it for months.

William Bratton, who was commissioner at the department when Ms. Tisch was deputy commissioner, said New Yorkers were going to be “very impressed.” He described her as articulate and “smart as a whip.”

“I’ve got a big smile on my face,” he said. “This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time.”

Christopher Dunn, the legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called Ms. Tisch a “serious person” who he hoped would work with the organization to keep officers accountable.

“The disciplinary system right now is completely broken and it’s creating a culture of impunity from the top to the bottom,” he said. “That has to change for the Police Department’s legitimacy and effectiveness.”

Many inside the department were glad at the prospect of a leader who wouldn’t need a primer on its vast and byzantine bureaucracy.

“I’m relieved,” said Louis Turco, president of the Lieutenants Benevolent Association. “The word ‘interim’ needs to be gone. We need consistency and the department needs stability.”

Detectives were “elated,” said Scott Munro, president of their union. “She understands the N.Y.P.D.,” he said. “We can count on her.”

But Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement that Ms. Tisch would face familiar problems: a department that is “critically understaffed, massively overworked and completely unsupported by a justice system.”

Others said her previous tour in the department gave reason to fear.

Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a group that has often criticized the department, said that the Domain Awareness System had deployed technology “against our most vulnerable communities.”

“This would be a civil rights nightmare at any moment, but especially at the dawn of the new Trump administration,” he said.

The Legal Aid Society described Ms. Tisch as “a driving force behind the N.Y.P.D.’s increase in the use of surveillance technology, a practice that must be curtailed.” The group also said it hoped that she would bring “wholesale change to a city agency that’s in urgent need of reform.”

Mr. Miller, the former police official, said that the Domain Awareness System merely combined existing databases and had made it faster and safer for officers to respond to crimes.

“Jessie Tisch took police communications further and faster in a year and a half than the entire police communications industry had done in a century,” he said.

Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.

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