By Michael R. Sisak
Associated Press
NEW YORK — 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.
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.
__
Associated Press reporter Philip Marcelo contributed to this report.