NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has accepted an offer from Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to remain New York City’s top cop under his administration — a move that comes despite sharp differences in their outlooks on public safety.
In a Wednesday email to NYPD officers announcing she will stay on, Tisch hinted at those political differences. But she wrote she ultimately agreed to remain in the job following “several conversations” with Mamdani, a democratic socialist who’s being sworn in as mayor Jan. 1.
“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,” she wrote to cops in the email, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News. “We also agree that you deserve the city’s respect and support.”
While she didn’t elaborate on the nature of their disagreements, she wrote she appreciates Mamdani “wants a team with different points of view — a team where ideas and policies are debated on their merits.”
“In those discussions, you can trust that I will be a fierce advocate for you and for this department. You know how I operate: I don’t mince words,” her message said. “When I say something, I mean it. And that is not going to change.”
Mamdani has pledged to keep the NYPD’s headcount flat, abolish the department’s controversial Strategic Response Group and get rid of its gang database — all proposals opposed by Tisch, who supports calls to hire more cops. Though Tisch hasn’t said what she thinks of the idea, Mamdani has also vowed to as mayor launch the Department of Community Safety, a $1 billion agency that would absorb some responsibilities currently handled by cops, such as mental health calls.
In another source of potential friction, Tisch, who’s Jewish, has been a staunch defender of Israel, whereas Mamdani is deeply critical of the country’s war in Gaza. Tisch’s family members also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on election-related efforts aimed at defeating Mamdani, who’s set to become the city’s first Muslim mayor.
“The two of us will not shy away from the fact that we hold disagreements on certain issues … but I also believe that these disagremeents are not only reconcilable, but they are the sign of a healthy partnership to come,” Mamdani said in an interview after his transition team officially announced the Tisch news.
When asked by The News whether he’d fire Tisch if she refuses to act on some of his campaign pledges, such as disbanding the Strategic Response Group, Mamdani reaffirmed he intends to make good on his promises and added: “I am looking to build a team around me that I am trusting to do their jobs, I’m not hiring or retaining individuals so that I can do their jobs for them, and I will also be the mayor of this city, I will be the person who is ultimately responsible, accountable and in charge.”
Years before his mayoral campaign, Mamdani posted messages on social media in 2020 calling for the need to “defund” and “dismantle” the NYPD. In one particularly incendiary post from 2020, Mamdani called the NYPD “anti-queer,” “racist” and “a danger to public safety.”
Since launching his mayoral run, Mamdani has apologized for those remarks and promised to keep NYPD funding at current levels. Still, some Mamdani critics have seized on his past rhetoric about police.
After Wednesday’s announcement, the NYPD’s rank-and-file unions were highly supportive of the news.
“We are very glad to hear that there will be stability and continuity in the NYPD’s leadership going forward,” Police Benevolent Association President Pat Hendry, whose union represents the department’s patrol cops, said in a statement. “Commissioner Tisch understands all of the many challenges police officers face on the streets and has been working productively with us to address them.”
In a press conference later in the day, Hendry told reporters he agrees with Tisch’s assessment that the NYPD needs to hire more cops and said their salaries should be jacked up, too — priorities Mamdani does not share.
“We need more police officers on this department, and you need to treat us and pay us like professionals,” Hendry said.
Detectives Endowment Association President Scott Munro echoed that sentiment. “She will continue to do a great job as long as she has the tools the mayor gives her — more people in the investigative track, more detectives, more resources and training,” he said in a phone interview. “She’s worked with us very well, recognizing that detectives are deserving of her support.”
By contrast, left-wing Mamdani supporters were not pleased by the announcement.
“Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani’s appointment of Jessica Tisch as police commissioner is a rebuff of his promises to New Yorkers and a disturbing endorsement of NYPD’s ongoing violence and corruption,” Loyda Colón, executive director of the police reform-focused Justice Committee, said in a statement, citing, among other issues, Tisch’s record on blocking certain Civilian Complaint Review Board disciplinary cases against cops accused of misconduct.
It’s common practice for incoming mayors to handpick a new NYPD commissioner aligned with their priorities and vision. It has been at least six decades since a New York City mayor retained a police commissioner from the previous administration.
Before saying he wished to keep Tisch, Mamdani was considering some NYPD veterans with more police reform experience for the commissioner post, including Rodney Harrison and Isa Abbassi, as previously reported by The News.
After Wednesday’s announcement, Mamdani and Tisch appeared together at the Police Memorial in downtown Manhattan, where they met with some patrol cops.
Tisch’s decision to stay on comes just under a year after she was sworn in as the city’s 48th police commissioner and amid widespread speculation about her staying on under Mamdani’s leadership.
Mamdani had repeatedly said both during the campaign and after his election win that he wanted to keep Tisch at the helm of the Police Department.
But Tisch declined to say for weeks whether she would accept the offer. In his interview with The News, Mamdani said she first confirmed to him this past weekend she wanted to stay on.
Tisch, 44, has been lauded for leading the NYPD as the city has seen a sharp reduction in crime as well as the lowest number of shootings since the computer statistics-driven policing era began in 1994.
Her precision policing model of sending cops to communities in the city where the most violence occurs “has delivered record-low shooting incidents and victims over the last nine months, and the safest quarter ever on our subways,” she said in October. “This is not a coincidence — it’s the result of an unprecedented, data-driven deployment of thousands of officers to the areas they are needed most.”
Outgoing Mayor Adams, an ex-NYPD captain who dumped his reelection bid this fall amid fallout from his corruption indictment, appointed Tisch to the top cop job in November 2024 during a period of tumult in the Police Department.
One of Adams’ previous police commissioners, Edward Caban, resigned months earlier after the feds confiscated his electronics as part of a sweeping corruption investigation. Then Caban’s successor, Interim NYPD Commissioner Thomas Donlon, was himself raided by the FBI as part of a separate probe, prompting him to leave the department too.
After taking over the reins at 1 Police Plaza, Tisch has dealt with more corruption fallout. NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, a close Adams ally, resigned in December 2024 after it emerged the feds are investigating him over allegations he traded sex with a subordinate for overtime pay.
Mamdani praised Tisch for cleaning up the department in a statement Wednesday morning.
“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,” he said.
Adams, who is in Uzbekistan this week on a taxpayer-funded trip, argued Mamdani’s decision to retain Tisch validates his administration’s public safety policies.
“Mayor-elect Mamdani is recognizing our public safety efforts were right and that they will continue into the future,” Adams said in a statement.
“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.”
Adams’ first police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, the first female top cop in city history, resigned in June 2023, with police sources saying she had grown tired of interference from the mayor and his team.
Tisch was no stranger to the nation’s largest police force when she took the job — she has worked in the past as a civilian NYPD employee, first as a counterterrorism analyst, then later as deputy commissioner of information technology. Prior to being elevated to the police commissioner job, she was the head of the Sanitation Department.
In contrast to Tisch, FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker, also an Adams appointee, announced earlier this month he was resigning, a move sources said was in part driven by ideological differences with Mamdani.
With Sheetal Banchariya
