NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch agrees to stay on under Zohran Mamdani’s administration

(NEW YORK) — New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will have one familiar face in his administration when he takes office in January.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced Wednesday that she accepted Mamdani’s offer to remain in her position when Mamdani succeeds Mayor Eric Adams.

Late into his mayoral campaign, Mamdani, 34, said he would not replace the commissioner if elected. The mayor-elect cited the city’s drop in shootings, murders and transit crime since Tisch, 44, began her tenure as the commissioner in November 2024.

“I’ve spoken to Mayor-elect Mamdani several times, and I’m ready to serve with honor as his Police Commissioner. That’s because he and I share many of the same public safety goals for New York City: lowering crime, making communities safer, rooting out corruption, and giving our officers the tools, support, and resources they need to carry out their noble work,” Tisch said in a statement.

“I have admired her work cracking down on corruption in the upper echelons of the police department, driving down crime in New York City, and standing up for New Yorkers in the face of authoritarianism,” Mamdani said in a statement.

Mamdani has been previously outspoken about his concerns about the NYPD and has apologized for some of his past comments that were critical of the force.

Tisch acknowledged that she and Mamdani do have some differences in a department-wide email on Wednesday morning.

“Now, do the Mayor-elect and I agree on everything? No, we don’t. But in speaking with him, it’s clear that we share broad and crucial priorities: the importance of public safety, the need to continue driving down crime, and the need to maintain stability and order across the department. We also agree that you deserve the city’s respect and support,” she said in the email that was obtained by ABC News.

“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. In those discussions, you can trust that I will be a fierce advocate for you and for this department. You know how I operate: I don’t mince words. When I say something, I mean it. And that is not going to change,” Tisch added.

Tisch, who is the daughter of James Tisch, the CEO of the Loews Corporation, has long been involved in city government under different administrations.

In 2008, she was an intelligence research specialist in the NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau, later counsel to the police commissioner, and the Counterterrorism Bureau’s director of policy and planning.

When Bill Bratton returned to lead the NYPD under Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014, Tisch was appointed as the deputy commissioner of Information Technology and led efforts to improve the department’s tech, including its CompStat tracking.

When Mayor Eric Adams took office in 2022, he appointed her as sanitation commissioner.

When Police Commissioner Edward Caban resigned in September 2024, following a federal probe and an FBI search of his home, Adams, who was indicted on federal charges that same month, appointed Thomas Donlon as an interim commissioner before announcing Tisch two months later.

She became the second female NYPD commissioner, following Keechant Sewell, who served from January 2022 to June 2024.

Adams, who decided not to run for re-election in October, praised Tisch’s work and her decision to stay on.

“In choosing her to stay on as police commissioner, Mayor-elect Mamdani is recognizing our public-safety efforts were right and that they will continue into the future. We all want a safer city, and keeping Commissioner Tisch in place and supporting our police officers every day with the policies we have implemented, is exactly how we do that,” he said in a statement Wednesday.