New York Metropolis Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani introduced Wednesday that the town’s present police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, has agreed to stay within the put up, a serious coup for the incoming mayor as he strikes to assuage issues over his previous criticisms of the New York Police Division.
In an announcement, Mamdani praised Tisch for “cracking down on corruption in the upper echelons of the police department” whereas additionally driving down crime within the metropolis.
Tisch’s resolution to remain on as commissioner is probably going to offer some degree of consolation to metropolis enterprise leaders and others who apprehensive that Mamdani’s previous harsh rhetoric in regards to the division in the course of the top of Black Lives Matter protests would translate into radical modifications on the NYPD.
The appointment additionally marks a political alliance between two leaders with opposing views and starkly completely different backgrounds.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist, campaigned for transformative social and financial change within the metropolis. Tisch is the heiress to a multibillion greenback household fortune and has been thought-about a gradual, institution average.
Tisch mentioned 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 management of the town’s scandal-shaken police division final November. She has overseen a drop shootings and a number of other classes of main crime, incomes reward from the enterprise group and a few police reform teams.
At a debate weeks earlier than the election, Mamdani introduced he deliberate to ask Tisch to remain on as police commissioner. However Tisch had declined to debate the provide each earlier than and instantly after Mamdani’s victory, saying she was targeted on main the division below 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 mentioned on the debate.
However the incoming mayor and police commissioner even have clear political variations. Tisch has fiercely criticized modifications to the state’s bail legal guidelines, which Mamdani helps. And whereas the mayor-elect has beforehand known as for defunding the police, Tisch has advocated for increasing their ranks, saying earlier this yr that “we need more cops, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”
Mamdani has since walked again his feedback calling to slash division funding and has mentioned he would preserve the headcount at its present quantity.
