NEW YORK– Towards stabilizing a government beset by investigations, resignations and… his own indictmentNew York Mayor Eric Adams was appointed Wednesday head of sanitary facilities Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. She will be a loyal city manager and former NYPD officer only the second wife in the high-profile high-pressure station.
The move comes at a critical time for the nation’s largest police department, strengthening the agency’s leadership after a tumultuous period punctuated by the departure of former Commissioner Edward Caban in September during a federal investigation. Days later, his interim replacement, Thomas Donlon, announced that he too had been searched by the FBI.
Tisch, 43, a Harvard-educated scion of a wealthy New York family, has worked for the city for 16 years and holds leadership positions at several agencies. As Commissioner for Sanitation, she became TikTok famous when she declared in 2022: “The rats don’t run the city, we do.”
“I need someone who will lead the police department into the next century,” Adams said, praising Tisch as a “visionary” and her track record of improving city operations.
Tisch said she “believes deeply in the nobility of police and the police profession” and “looks forward to coming home.”
Tisch’s first job in city government was with the NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau. She served as director of planning and policy helped shape the security infrastructure after September 11deploying mobile radiation detectors and helping develop a digital information sharing tool with direct access to surveillance cameras and license plate readers.
As Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology, she has spearheading the use of body-worn cameras and smartphones, transformed the emergency response center, introduced a gunshot detection system and worked with the city’s public transportation system to get police radios working in the subway.
“Once I started, I never wanted to stop,” Tisch said in a Harvard alumni publication last year.
Tisch’s tenure has spanned three mayors: Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and Adams.
In 2019, after more than a decade with the NYPD, de Blasio appointed her to lead the police department the city’s technology office. When the The COVID-19 pandemic has struck the following year, she played a key role in the city’s response, managing the digital infrastructure that enabled 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 odors and eliminating rats. The city finally started making demands Garbage bags are placed in waste bins for collection – something other cities had been doing for years.
Before Wednesday’s announcement, Tisch testified at a City Council hearing on the dumpster requirements — her final act as sanitation commissioner. About 90 minutes later she said she had a “hard stop” and had to leave without giving any indication of the new track.
The wealth of Tisch’s family has led to criticism that she is a nepo baby, or more accurately a fake appointee.
Adams pushed back on that, saying Wednesday that Tisch “doesn’t need to be on the city council. She is here because of her love for 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 a former chancellor of the state Board of Regents, which oversees education.
Her late grandfather, Laurence Tisch, once ran CBS. Her cousins are co-owners of the NFL’s Giants. The family has donated 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 working board of the New York City Police Foundationa nonprofit organization that funds some of the NYPD’s work, including stationing counterterrorism officers in more than a dozen cities around the world, and Crime Stoppers’ tip reward program.
Tisch told the Harvard Law Bulletin that it was a friend who led her to public service.
She graduated with a law degree and a Master of Business Administration degree in 2008, but “the financial crisis hit and I thought it would be difficult to find a job,” Tisch told the publication in 2019.
“A friend said, ‘Why don’t you join the NYPD? I know someone there.’ I said, ‘I can’t even imagine what someone like me would do in law enforcement,'” Tisch said.
David Cohen, then deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, suggested Tisch work for him — which led to her first job as planning and policy director.
Tisch remembered telling him, “I don’t know. Counter-terrorism sounds really scary. I like ‘Wet’ more & Order something like that.”
But, she said, Cohen told her, “Trust me, this is the right choice for you.”
As deputy commissioner for information technology from 2014 to 2019, she helped modernize the department while addressing and pushing back on criticism of its decision to equip officers with smartphones using the unpopular Windows Phone operating system.
After the New York Post ridiculed the decision as a costly joke in 2017, Tisch explained it in a blog post that she chose the phones because they integrated with existing department technology, allowing for faster responses to emergencies 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 free of charge.
Tisch got into trouble again when she lent an ex-NYPD colleague $75,000 for law school and later had the debt forgiven after that person was rehired, placed under her supervision and given a raise. The city’s Conflict of Interest Board fined her $2,000.
Now she takes charge of a department where there is even 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 term, amid speculation that he was undermining her authority.
Under her replacement, Caban, the NYPD moved more leniently in disciplining officers and more aggressively in accepting criticism. Some top delegates posted screeds on social media targeting critics and reporters, or castigated them in person or on the phone. The department has even dropped its old slogan – “Courtesy, professionalism, respect” – for example aimed at fighting crime and public safety.
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Associated Press reporter Philip Marcelo contributed to this report.