NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's offer to remain the city's top cop when he takes office in January.
Both Mamdani and Tisch released statements confirming the appointment. Tisch has served as commissioner for about a year under Mayor Eric Adams.
"I have admired her work cracking down on corruption in the upper echelons of the police department, driving down crime in New York City, and standing up for New Yorkers in the face of authoritarianism," Mamdani said. “Together, we will deliver a city where rank-and-file police officers and the communities they serve alike are safe, represented, and proud to call New York their home."
Tisch said, “Thanks to the men and women of the NYPD, the strategies we deployed this year have delivered historic reductions in crime.”
"I’ve spoken to Mayor-elect Mamdani several times, and I’m ready to serve with honor as his Police Commissioner," she continued. "That’s because he and I share many of the same public safety goals for New York City: lowering crime, making communities safer, rooting out corruption, and giving our officers the tools, support, and resources they need to carry out their noble work."
Her decision to stay on is likely to provide some level of comfort to city business leaders and others who worried that Mamdani’s past harsh rhetoric about the department during the height of Black Lives Matter protests would translate into radical changes at the NYPD.
The appointment also marks a political alliance between two leaders with opposing views and starkly different backgrounds. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, campaigned for transformative social and economic change in the city. Tisch is the heiress to a multibillion dollar family fortune and has been considered a steady, establishment moderate.
At a debate weeks before the election, Mamdani announced he planned to ask Tisch to stay on as police commissioner. But Tisch had declined to discuss the offer both before and immediately after Mamdani’s victory, saying she was focused on leading the department under Adams.
Adams responded to the appointment with a statement of his own, saying crime was "out of control" when he took office in 2022 and that Tisch and her predecessors have helped drive it down.
"In choosing her to stay on as police commissioner, Mayor-elect Mamdani is recognizing our public-safety efforts were right and that they will continue into the future," Adams said. "We all want a safer city, and keeping Commissioner Tisch in place and supporting our police officers every day with the policies we have implemented, is exactly how we do that."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.