NEW YORK – Moving to stabilize an administration roiled by investigations, resignations and his own indictment, New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday appointed sanitation chief Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. A city government stalwart and ex-NYPD official, she'll be just the second woman in the high-profile, high-pressure post.
The move comes at a critical time for the nation’s largest police department, shoring up its leadership after a tumultuous stretch punctuated by former commissioner Edward Caban's exit in September amid a federal investigation. Days later, his interim replacement, Thomas Donlon, disclosed that he, too, had been searched by the FBI.
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Tisch, 43, the Harvard-educated scion of a wealthy New York family, has worked for the city for 16 years, holding leadership roles in several agencies. As sanitation commissioner, she became TikTok famous when she declared in 2022, “The rats don’t run the city, we do.”
“I need someone that’s going to take the police department into the next century,” Adams said, praising Tisch as a “visionary” and lauding her track record of improving city operations.
Tisch said she believes “very deeply in the nobility of the police and the profession of policing” and is “looking forward to coming home.”
Tisch's first job in city government was in the NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau. As planning and policy director, she helped shape post-9/11 security infrastructure, deploying mobile radiation detectors and helping develop a digital information-sharing tool with instant access to surveillance cameras and license-plate readers.
As deputy commissioner for information technology, she spearheaded use of body-worn cameras and smartphones, transformed 911 dispatching, introduced a gunshot-detection system and worked with the city’s transit agency to make police radios work in the subway.
“Once I started, I never wanted to stop,” Tisch told a Harvard alumni publication last year.
Tisch’s tenure has transcended three mayors: Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and Adams.
In 2019, after more than a decade at the NYPD, de Blasio appointed her to run the city's technology agency. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the following year, she had a key role in the city’s response, managing the digital infrastructure that facilitated a rapid shift to remote work, learning and online services.
As Sanitation Commissioner since 2022, Tisch led what the department calls a “Trash Revolution” aimed at improving cleanliness, reducing stench and eliminating rats. The city finally started requiring trash bags be placed in bins for pickup — something other cities had done for years.
Before Wednesday's announcement, Tisch was testifying at a City Council hearing on the bin requirements — her last act as Sanitation Commissioner. About 90 minutes in, she said she had a “hard stop” and had to leave without giving any indication of the new job.
Tisch’s family wealth has led to criticism that she’s a nepo baby — or, rather, a nepo appointee.
Adams pushed back on that, saying Wednesday that Tisch “does not have to be in city government. She’s here because of the love of the city.”
Tisch's father, James S. Tisch, is president and CEO of Loews Corporation, the conglomerate that owns Loews Hotels and CNA Financial. Her mother, Merryl Tisch, is former chancellor of the state Board of Regents, which supervises education.
Her late grandfather, Laurence Tisch, once led CBS. Her cousins are co-owners of the NFL’s Giants. The family has given millions of dollars to cultural and academic institutions and is the namesake of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Her husband, Daniel Levine, is a venture capitalist. They have two sons.
Closer to her new job, her uncle Andrew Tisch and cousin Alexander Tisch, are on the board of the New York City Police Foundation, a nonprofit that funds some NYPD work, including stationing counterterrorism officers in more than dozen cities worldwide, and the Crime Stoppers tip reward program.
Tisch told the Harvard Law Bulletin that it was a friend that led her to public service.
She graduated in 2008 with law and Master of Business Administration degrees, but the “financial crisis was hitting, and I thought it’d be difficult to find a job,” Tisch told the publication in 2019.
“A friend said: ‘Why don’t you go work at the NYPD? I know someone there.’ I said, ‘I can’t even imagine what someone like me would do at the Police Department,’” Tisch said.
David Cohen, then deputy commissioner of counterterrorism, suggested Tisch work for him — leading to her first job as planning and policy director.
Tisch recalled telling him: “I don’t know. Counterterrorism sounds really scary. I’m more into ‘Law & Order’ kind of stuff.”
But, she said, Cohen told her: “Trust me, this will be right for you.”
As deputy commissioner of information technology from 2014 to 2019, she helped modernize the department while navigating — and pushing back at — criticism of her decision to equip officers with smartphones using the unpopular Windows Phone operating system.
After the New York Post derided the decision in 2017 as a costly boondoggle, Tisch explained in a blog post that she chose the phones because they integrated with existing department technology, enabling faster emergency responses while putting vital data at officers' fingertips. At the time, she wrote, the project was 45% under budget and the phones and their iPhone replacements were provided at no cost.
Tisch ran into trouble again when she loaned an ex-NYPD colleague $75,000 for law school and later forgave the debt after that person was rehired, transferred to her supervision and given a pay increase. The city’s Conflicts of Interest Board fined her $2,000.
Now she’s taking charge of a department in yet more chaos.
Adams’ first commissioner, Keechant Sewell, made history as the first woman in the post but resigned last year, just 18 months into her tenure, amid speculation that he was undermining her authority.
Under her replacement, Caban, the NYPD tacked more lenient in disciplining officers and more aggressive in taking on criticism. Some top deputies posted social media screeds targeting critics and reporters, or castigated them in person or on the phone. The department even ditched its longtime slogan — “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect” — for one focused on crimefighting and public safety.
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Associated Press reporter Philip Marcelo contributed to this report.