Jessica Tisch may not have been reformers' first choice to lead the NYPD, but some say they’ve warmed to the idea since Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani floated it last month.
Mamdani has proposed creating a new billion-dollar civilian-led safety agency, limiting the role of police in responding to certain 911 calls and curbing the NYPD’s disciplinary power. All of those plans would shake up the status quo in an agency that often relies on long-held norms.
The democratic socialist's pre-election announcement that he’d like to keep Tisch as commissioner may have reassured moderates and the business community, but it raised fears among his more left-leaning supporters that keeping Mayor Eric Adams’ police commissioner would stall their agenda.
“There always has been and always will be a tension between the police commissioner and other agencies who are trying to advance public safety,” Janos Marton, policy director at progressive advocacy organization Dream.org, said. “And Jessica Tisch is a particularly connected and powerful political actor.”
Marton, though, said he was buoyed by Mamdani’s assurance in a recent interview “that everyone working in this administration would follow the vision from the top around a new approach to public safety.”
Still, there are a number of issues on which Tisch and Mamdani are either publicly opposed or have differing views.
Mamdani has said he wants to get rid of an NYPD database of alleged gang members. Tisch previously called the idea of doing so “dangerous and so reckless.”
Tisch also blamed state bail reforms for a post-pandemic rise in crime, while Mamdani has cited studies refuting that assertion.
Mamdani has said he wants to limit police authority in discipline, while Tisch has used that authority to reverse the closely watched decision to fire Lt. Jonathan Rivera, an officer who fatally shot an unarmed man during a Bronx traffic stop.
Tisch has not taken a public stance on some of Mamdani’s signature proposals, including sending civilians to some 911 calls instead of armed officers — a staple of Mamdani’s public safety agenda.
Neither has she shared her thoughts on his intent to disband an aggressive NYPD unit known as the Strategic Response Group, though she has praised the unit's successful handling of protests.
She’s been far less lenient toward police misconduct than past commissioners, but she has been willing to block some disciplinary cases.
Criminal justice reformers, meanwhile, have credited Tisch with rooting out inefficiencies and alleged corruption in the NYPD's ranks.
"She's been all about returning police to police functions,” said Elizabeth Glazer, a former federal prosecutor who runs the public safety nonprofit Vital City.
Glazer said Tisch and Mamdani share the goal of returning police to fundamental police work: “Her first couple of months were all about pulling back in the specialized units, returning strength to the precincts, so that they could do their core police job.”
One of the first controversial decisions Tisch made as NYPD commissioner was transferring hundreds of officers from specialized units to patrol duties.
Max Markham, executive director of NYU’s Policing Project, said he’s advised Mamdani on sending non-police responders on certain 911 calls. That's still possible under Tisch, Markham said.
“ I'm not pessimistic that we can still get a lot done because frankly, the data on civilian crisis responders speaks for itself,” he said, pointing to research showing reductions in crime, arrests and 911 call volume.
Tisch will have a tricky path transitioning between Adams and Mamdani if she should stay on.
Nick Encalada-Malinowski, who helps lead the advocacy group VOCAL-NY, rejected Mamdani’s choice to ask Tisch to stay, saying her quality-of-life enforcement efforts criminalize communities struggling to survive.
“That is particularly worrisome in the context of significant federal cuts to health care, housing and food benefits that will cause many New Yorkers to be pushed to the margins starting in 2026,” he said.
Tisch has defended her focus on quality-of-life enforcement as different from the often-maligned “broken windows” method of crime fighting, which relies in part on low-level arrests.
