New York City Names Jessica Tisch Police Commissioner, After Months of Turmoil

New York: New York City Mayor Eric ams on Wednesday appointed sanitation chief Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. A city government stalwart and ex-NYPD official, she'll be just second woman in high-profile, high-pressure post.

New York City Police Commissioner

move comes at a critical time for nation’s largest police department, shoring up its leership 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, h been searched by FBI.

Tisch, 43, Harvard-educated scion of a wealthy New York family, has worked for city for 16 years, holding leership roles in several agencies. As sanitation commissioner, she became TikTok famous when she declared in 2022, “ rats don’t run city, we do.”

Tisch has never walked a beat as a police officer, but she isn’t an outsider, eir.

Her first job in city government was in NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau. As planning and policy director, she helped shape department’s post-9/11 security infrastructure, deploying mobile riation detectors and helping develop a digital information-sharing tool with instant access to surveillance cameras and license-plate reers.

As deputy commissioner for information technology, she spearheed use of body-worn cameras and smartphones, transformed 911 dispatching, introduced an acoustic gunshot-detection system and worked with city’s transit agency to make police rios work in subway.

“Once I started, I never wanted to stop,” Tisch told a Harvard alumni publication in an interview.