New York’s mayor-elect Mamdani says city’s police commissioner will continue in post

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NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that the city’s current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, has agreed to remain in the post, a major coup for the incoming mayor as he moves to assuage concerns over his past criticisms of the New York Police Department.

In a statement, Mamdani praised Tisch for “cracking down on corruption in the upper echelons of the police department” while also driving down crime in the city.

Tisch’s decision to stay on as commissioner is likely to provide some level of comfort to city business leaders and others who worried that Mamdani’s past harsh rhetoric about the department during the height of Black Lives Matter protests would translate into radical changes at the NYPD.

The appointment also marks a political alliance between two leaders with opposing views and starkly different backgrounds.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist, campaigned for transformative social and economic change in the city. Tisch is the heiress to a multibillion dollar family fortune and has been considered a steady, establishment moderate.

Tisch said she and Mamdani “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 took control of the city’s scandal-shaken police department last November. She has overseen a drop shootings and several categories of major crime, earning praise from the business community and some police reform groups.

At a debate weeks before the election, Mamdani announced he planned to ask Tisch to stay on as police commissioner. But Tisch had declined to discuss the offer both before and immediately after Mamdani’s victory, saying she was focused on leading the department under Mayor Eric Adams.

“Commissioner Tisch took on a broken status quo, started to deliver accountability, rooting out corruption and reducing crime across the five boroughs,” Mamdani said at the debate.

But the incoming mayor and police commissioner also have clear political differences. Tisch has fiercely criticized changes to the state’s bail laws, which Mamdani supports. And while the mayor-elect has previously called for defunding the police, Tisch has advocated for expanding their ranks, saying earlier this year that “we need more cops, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”

Mamdani has since walked back his comments calling to slash department funding and has said he would keep the headcount at its current number.