NYPD Commissioner Tisch accepts Mamdani’s job offer, but they don’t ‘agree on everything’

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch will remain in her position under incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani — but she doesn’t agree with her new boss on everything.

In statements announcing Tisch’s appointment Wednesday, both she and Mamdani emphasized their shared goals of lowering crime, fighting corruption and supporting police officers. But Tisch wrote in a message to members of the NYPD that there are differences of opinion between her and the mayor-elect.

“The reason I have chosen to stay is you,” Tisch told the department. “Now, do the Mayor-elect and I agree on everything? No, we don’t.”

“I appreciate [that] the mayor-elect wants a team with different points of view — a team where ideas and policies are debated on their merits,” she added.

Areas where Tisch and Mamdani seem to disagree include bail reform, policing of protests, disciplinary procedures and aggressive enforcement of low-level offenses.

“The commissioner and I will not shy away from the fact that we hold disagreements on certain issues, and I firmly believe that these disagreements are not only reconcilable but they're in fact a sign of a healthy partnership to come,” Mamdani said in a phone interview after the announcement.

Prior to the election, Mamdani said at the final mayoral debate that he would request Tisch stay, a move cheered on by law enforcement officials and moderate Democrats, but one that drew skepticism from his progressive base.

“I think he made a good decision,” Rodney Harrison, a former NYPD executive who served as chief of detectives and chief of department, told Gothamist after the debate. “She has great executives around her that will help her succeed in the next administration.”

Policing experts previously told Gothamist that Tisch’s greatest triumph as commissioner has been rooting out corruption within the top ranks of the department that festered during the Adams administration.

When she took over as boss, the NYPD faced near-constant allegations of corruption, including federal investigations into the two commissioners who immediately preceded her.

During his campaign, Mamdani lauded Tisch for cleaning up the department while also overseeing a drop in crime.

“Commissioner Tisch took on a broken status quo,” he said at the final mayoral debate in October.

But to many of Mamdani’s supporters, Tisch did not seem like a natural fit for his police commissioner.

Since Adams appointed Tisch to the post in November 2024, she’s been an outspoken critic of New York state’s criminal justice reforms, which she blamed for the city’s spike in crime during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She’s also overseen increased quality of life enforcement by the NYPD and, alongside Adams, touted the effectiveness of new teams of officers that respond to minor violations like noise complaints, outdoor drug use and double parking.

Tisch has pushed back on the notion that such efforts are a return to the “broken windows style” of policing popularized by former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton in the 1990s.

But the enforcement has drawn criticism from criminal justice reform advocates.

“We do have a lot of concern about it,” Jennvine Wong, a supervising attorney with the nonprofit Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project, previously told Gothamist. “We’re talking about a time that is pretty hard for a lot of New Yorkers with respect to affordability and pushing more people through the criminal legal system is not an answer when we’re trying to protect New Yorkers.”

In their announcement Wednesday, Mamdani and Tisch said they would ensure the mayor-elect’s proposed Department of Community Safety, which would send mental health professionals to help New Yorkers in distress, would collaborate closely with the NYPD. Police officers would remain focused on addressing violent crime, they said.

Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said Wednesday the union was “very glad to hear that there will be stability and continuity in the NYPD’s leadership going forward.”

“Commissioner Tisch understands all of the many challenges police officers face on the streets and has been working productively with us to address them,” he said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing that work in the months ahead.”

This is a developing story and has been updated.