NEW YORK—New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday appointed sanitation chief Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. A metropolis authorities stalwart and ex-NYPD official, she’ll be simply the second girl within the high-profile, high-pressure put up.
The transfer comes at a essential time for the nation’s largest police division, shoring up its management after a tumultuous stretch punctuated by former commissioner Edward Caban’s exit in September amid a federal investigation. Days later, his interim alternative, Thomas Donlon, disclosed that he, too, had been searched by the FBI.
Tisch, 43, the Harvard-educated scion of a rich New York household, has labored for the town for 16 years, holding management roles in a number of businesses. As sanitation commissioner, she grew to become TikTok well-known when she declared in 2022, “The rats don’t run the town, we do.”
“I want somebody that’s going to take the police division into the following century,” Adams stated, praising Tisch as a “visionary” and lauding her monitor report of bettering metropolis operations.
Tisch stated she believes “very deeply within the the Aristocracy of the police and the career of policing” and is “trying ahead to coming house.”
Tisch’s first job in metropolis authorities was within the NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau. As planning and coverage director, she helped form post-9/11 safety infrastructure, deploying cell radiation detectors and serving to develop a digital information-sharing software with on the spot entry to surveillance cameras and license-plate readers.
As deputy commissioner for data expertise, she spearheaded use of body-worn cameras and smartphones, remodeled 911 dispatching, launched a gunshot-detection system and labored with the town’s transit company to make police radios work within the subway.
“As soon as I began, I by no means wished to cease,” Tisch informed a Harvard alumni publication final yr.
Tisch’s tenure has transcended three mayors: Michael Bloomberg, Invoice de Blasio and Adams.
In 2019, after greater than a decade on the NYPD, de Blasio appointed her to run the town’s expertise company. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the next yr, she had a key function within the metropolis’s response, managing the digital infrastructure that facilitated a speedy shift to distant work, studying and on-line providers.
As Sanitation Commissioner since 2022, Tisch led what the division calls a “Trash Revolution” geared toward bettering cleanliness, decreasing stench and eliminating rats. Town lastly began requiring trash baggage be positioned in bins for pickup—one thing different cities had executed for years.
Earlier than Wednesday’s announcement, Tisch was testifying at a Metropolis Council listening to on the bin necessities — her final act as Sanitation Commissioner. About 90 minutes in, she stated she had a “laborious cease” and needed to depart with out giving any indication of the brand new job.
Tisch’s household wealth has led to criticism that she’s a nepo child—or, fairly, a nepo appointee.
Adams pushed again on that, saying Wednesday that Tisch “doesn’t need to be in metropolis authorities. She’s right here due to the love of the town.”
Tisch’s father, James S. Tisch, is president and CEO of Loews Company, the conglomerate that owns Loews Motels and CNA Monetary. Her mom, Merryl Tisch, is former chancellor of the state Board of Regents, which supervises schooling.
Her late grandfather, Laurence Tisch, as soon as led CBS. Her cousins are co-owners of the NFL’s Giants. The household has given hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to cultural and educational establishments and is the namesake of New York College’s Tisch Faculty of the Arts.
Her husband, Daniel Levine, is a enterprise capitalist. They’ve two sons.
Nearer to her new job, her uncle Andrew Tisch and cousin Alexander Tisch, are on the board of the New York Metropolis Police Basis, a nonprofit that funds some NYPD work, together with stationing counterterrorism officers in additional than dozen cities worldwide, and the Crime Stoppers tip reward program.
Tisch informed the Harvard Regulation Bulletin that it was a buddy that led her to public service.
She graduated in 2008 with legislation and Grasp of Enterprise Administration levels, however the “monetary disaster was hitting, and I believed it’d be tough to discover a job,” Tisch informed the publication in 2019.
“A buddy stated: ‘Why don’t you go work on the NYPD? I do know somebody there.’ I stated, ‘I can’t even think about what somebody like me would do on the Police Division,’” Tisch stated.
David Cohen, then deputy commissioner of counterterrorism, recommended Tisch work for him—resulting in her first job as planning and coverage director.
Tisch recalled telling him: “I don’t know. Counterterrorism sounds actually scary. I’m extra into ‘Regulation & Order’ sort of stuff.”
However, she stated, Cohen informed her: “Belief me, this shall be best for you.”
As deputy commissioner of data expertise from 2014 to 2019, she helped modernize the division whereas navigating—and pushing again at—criticism of her choice to equip officers with smartphones utilizing the unpopular Home windows Cellphone working system.
After the New York Publish derided the choice in 2017 as a pricey boondoggle, Tisch defined in a weblog put up that she selected the telephones as a result of they built-in with present division expertise, enabling sooner emergency responses whereas placing very important knowledge at officers’ fingertips. On the time, she wrote, the mission was 45 % underneath price range and the telephones and their iPhone replacements had been supplied without charge.
Tisch bumped into hassle once more when she loaned an ex-NYPD colleague $75,000 for legislation faculty and later forgave the debt after that particular person was rehired, transferred to her supervision and given a pay improve. Town’s Conflicts of Curiosity Board fined her $2,000.
Now she’s taking cost of a division in but extra chaos.
Adams’ first commissioner, Keechant Sewell, made historical past as the primary girl within the put up however resigned final yr, simply 18 months into her tenure, amid hypothesis that he was undermining her authority.
Underneath her alternative, Caban, the NYPD tacked extra lenient in disciplining officers and extra aggressive in taking up criticism. Some prime deputies posted social media screeds focusing on critics and reporters, or castigated them in particular person or on the telephone. The division even ditched its longtime slogan—“Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect”—for one centered on crimefighting and public security.