NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that the city's current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, has agreed to remain in the post, a major coup for the incoming mayor as he moves to assuage concerns over his past criticism of the police department.
For Mamdani, a democratic socialist who once called to defund the New York Police Department, the appointment seals one of the most consequential decisions of his nascent administration and provides further insight into the progressive's looming stewardship of City Hall.
Tisch's decision to remain commissioner could provide comfort to city business leaders and others who worried that Mamdani’s criticism of the department at the height of Black Lives Matter protests would translate into radical changes at the NYPD.
But the announcement didn’t sit well with some progressives who helped elect Mamdani and wanted to see a bigger shake-up atop the nation’s largest police force.
Mamdani, 34, campaigned for transformative social and economic change in the city and has proposed creating a new “Department of Community Safety” that would expand deployment of mental health care teams to handle certain emergency calls. Tisch is the heiress to a multibillion dollar family fortune and is considered a steady, establishment moderate with nearly two decades in public service.
Shared priorities, some disagreement
In a statement, Mamdani praised Tisch for “cracking down on corruption in the upper echelons of the police department” while also driving down crime in the city and “standing up for New Yorkers in the face of authoritarianism.”
In an email to officers Wednesday, Tisch acknowledged the different views she has with Mamdani but said a series of conversations with him had made her “confident" that she can lead the department under his mayoralty.
“Now, do the Mayor-elect and I agree on everything? No, we don’t. But in speaking with him, it’s clear that we share broad and crucial priorities: the importance of public safety, the need to continue driving down crime, and the need to maintain stability and order across the department. We also agree that you deserve the city’s respect and support,” Tisch wrote in the email, which was shared with The Associated Press.
Hours after the announcement, Mamdani and Tisch appeared together at a Manhattan memorial for officers who died in the line of duty. Both declined to answer questions about their past differences, with Tisch saying she wanted to “leave politics out of it today.”
Tisch's tenure
Tisch was appointed to lead the department last November as current Mayor Eric Adams and the city’s police force were reeling from overlapping scandals.
In September, federal authorities seized phones from Adams and several high-level appointees, including the police commissioner, Edward Caban, who soon resigned. Agents then searched the home of his interim replacement, Thomas Donlon, just a week after he took over.
During her first weeks as commissioner, Tisch reassigned several top officials, including some seen as allies to the mayor. The department’s top uniformed official, a longtime friend of Adams, resigned in December amid harassment allegations.
Her tenure has coincided with a drop in shootings and several categories of major crime, earning praise from the business community and some police reform groups.
At a debate weeks before the election, Mamdani announced that he planned to ask Tisch to stay on as police commissioner. Tisch declined to discuss the offer before and immediately after Mamdani’s victory, saying she was focused on leading the department under Adams.
Neither has discussed how they plan to reconcile their political differences. Tisch has fiercely criticized changes to the state’s bail laws, which Mamdani supports. And while the mayor-elect has previously called for defunding the police, Tisch has advocated for expanding the department's ranks.
Mamdani has since walked back his call to slash department funding and said he would keep the headcount at its current level.
A mixed reception
The announcement of Tisch’s appointment drew split reactions among Mamdani’s left-leaning supporters. The Justice Committee, a police reform group, called the move “a rebuff of his promises to New Yorkers and a disturbing endorsement of NYPD’s ongoing violence and corruption.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, offered tepid praise for Tisch, while urging her to “join the Mayor-Elect in seeking to reduce the City’s misplaced demands on police to solve entrenched problems.”
Since winning the election, Mamdani has moved to surround himself with a cast of seasoned officials as he prepares to enter City Hall while facing some concern that his limited public experience could create headaches once he assumes control of America's biggest city.
He tapped a veteran budget official with deep experience in state and city government to be his first deputy mayor, and named a team that includes two former deputy mayors to help guide his transition into City Hall.
Tisch, a Harvard-educated scion of a wealthy New York family, previously led the city's sanitation department, becoming TikTok famous for declaring “The rats don’t run the city, we do" in 2022.
Her first job in city government was in the NYPD's counterterrorism bureau. She has helped shape post-9/11 security infrastructure in the city and, as deputy commissioner for information technology, spearheaded the use of body cameras and smartphones.