NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch: Will she stay on with next mayor?

With the race for mayor entering its final weeks, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch is striking a note of uncertainty about her own future leading the nation’s largest police department.

"I don’t know how long I have left in this job," Tisch told those gathered Thursday for a dinner meeting of the Detectives' Endowment Association, where she was given an award as one of its honorees of the year.

"But I promise you," Tisch continued. "I will never stop fighting for you and never stop being proud of you and will never stop worrying about you."

The police commissioner's remarks, which drew a standing ovation from a crowd of hundreds, were her first public comments to touch on her potential future plans and came against a backdrop of political pressure for the three mayoral candidates to keep her in the job as the city's top cop.

The frontrunner's view

Last Wednesday, Democratic mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani, asked during a radio interview with WINS/1010 AM whether he would keep Tisch as police commissioner if elected, answered that he was "actively considering doing so."

Said Scott Munrow, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association: "He would be crazy not to."

A spokesperson for former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who is running for mayor as an independent candidate, said on Tuesday that Cuomo would retain Tisch as commissioner. Maria Sliwa, media director for Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, told Newsday he has said in the past that if Tisch wanted to stay in the job, he would keep her as police commissioner.

"Nothing has changed," Maria Sliwa said.

While not widely known, a provision of the City Charter gives Tisch, like all previous police commissioners, a five-year term, which in her case began last November.

Preventing political pressure

The five-year term was established decades ago to ensure the commissioner had independence from political pressure, said Eric Lane, former dean of the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University and former executive director of the New York City Charter Revision Commission.

Previous police commissioners have left their posts when a new mayor took office and not invoked the five-year term to stay. When asked last week if Tisch was considering her options under the five-year term rule, a spokesperson for the commissioner said she remained "laser focused" on her job but declined to comment further.

Instead, the spokesperson provided recent remarks by Tisch lauding the NYPD's success in fighting violent crime in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams.

"This is not a coincidence — it is the result of an unprecedented data-driven deployment of thousands of officers to the areas they are needed most," Tisch said in the remarks during the quarterly crime roundup.

"They were given a clear mandate to get the guns and go after gangs — and they delivered."

What is unknown is whether Tisch would want to stay if Mamdani wins.

Under the City Charter, the mayor or the governor can remove a police commissioner if "the public interest shall so require," a phrase not defined in the statute.

Potential conflict over crime data

"Could she stay for Mamdani? Not likely," said political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who represents a number of law enforcement unions, such as the detectives, but no candidate in the mayoral race.

Sheinkopf believes that while Tisch has made significant strides in driving down violent crime to record low levels under Adams, she would probably be in continual conflict with a largely Democratic City Council, and a new mayor looking to change or do away with police tactics she favors and believes have helped in reducing violent crime.

At a recent public safety forum, Mamdani criticized the NYPD's gang database, also known as the criminal group database, used in street gang investigations because it includes people on the basis of photos they post on social media.

Tisch has said numerous times that doing away with the database, as the City Council has proposed through legislation, would "absolutely defy common sense" and hobble NYPD investigators. In recent weeks, she has credited the database with enabling takedowns of numerous gang groups.

Just last week, Tisch tapped Michael LiPetri, an East Meadow native who kept close tabs on police CompStat data as chief of crime control strategies, to be the interim chief of department, NYPD's highest uniformed rank.

Former NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, who twice held the job — under mayors Rudy Giuliani and Bill de Blasio — told Newsday: "The five-year term means nothing."

Bratton, who was squeezed out of his first role as police commissioner in a power play with Giuliani, opted in his second tenure to quit the de Blasio administration after 2½ years to take a job in private industry.

Potential for tension

If Tisch stayed on, denying Mamdani the chance to pick his own commissioner, it would make for a problematic relationship, Bratton said.

"It would start off immediately with tension because everything she has implemented to reduce crime and disorder, he would do away with," he said, referring to Mamdani’s past, which has included statements about defunding the police — a sentiment he has distanced himself from in the campaign — and statements about doing away with the Strategic Response Group, the gang database.

"My advice to her would be to leave," Bratton said.

He recalled that when he was chief superintendent of police in Boston in the 1980s and early 1990s, the mayor there wanted him to leave, but because he had a five-year term, he refused. When Giuliani offered Bratton a job as New York City Transit police chief, he took it and left his hometown.

There has been growing chorus asking for Mamdani to keep Tisch on. Richard Aborn, head of the nonprofit New York Citizens Crime Commission, said Sunday he thought it would be a good move for Mamdani to maintain Tisch as commissioner. Gov. Kathy Hochul said last week that she has urged Mamdani, who she has endorsed, to keep Tisch.

"I have highly recommended that he retain Jessica Tisch," Hochul told reporters. "If not her, then someone of that caliber, who is someone who has a track record of success in keeping crime down."

With Adams out of the race, the election will likely tighten. The latest Quinnipiac poll of likely voters last week showed no candidate with a clear majority: Mamdani had 46%, Cuomo had 33% and Sliwa had 15%. John Chell, who retired last week as the NYPD’s chief of department, thinks that if the race tightens further and Mamdani wins but by a closer margin, he might want to consider keeping Tisch.

"If it is that close and she [Tisch] had a good year, it would behoove him to give himself cover," Chell said of Mamdani. "Because at the end of the day, public safety is always Number One. Without public safety, you don’t have anything." 

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.