Mayor Zohran Mamdani says there are 'no plans' to remove Jessica Tisch as NYPD commissioner

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday rebuffed demands from his political base to fire NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, saying he’s pleased with the job she’s done.

Speaking in Queens at an unrelated event, Mamdani cited New York City’s falling crime rate as a key reason to keep her on the job.

"Jessica Tisch is the police commissioner," Mamdani said, in response to a reporter's question. "I have no plans to change that. The reason that I made the decision to have Jessica Tisch as the police commissioner was because of her record of uprooting corruption from the upper echelons of the NYPD, while lowering crime across our city. And over the last 10 months that we've worked together, we have delivered the lowest recorded number of murders in our city's history, the lowest recorded number of shootings as well as shooting victims."

Tisch was appointed in 2024 by now-former Mayor Eric Adams after scandals involving his past police commissioners as well as his own corruption indictment. Gov. Kathy Hochul strongly encouraged Mamdani to retain Tisch.

On Saturday, the national chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mamdani is a member, posted on X: "We demand that Mayor Zohran Mamdani fire NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and use every power available to him to drive ICE out of New York City."

As a mayoral candidate, Mamdani pledged to enact NYPD policing changes that align with the DSA's wishes. But 10 months into the job, those promises have gone largely unfulfilled.

Among the unchanged policies that his supporters are angry about include his promises relating to how protests are policed, how police calls are handled involving those in the throes of a mental crisis, the retention of a controversial gang database and the continuation of quality-of-life policing.

Mamdani says that with some of those issues, including his promise to change the police-protesting unit, he remains committed to making good on his pledges but is still hammering out the best approach.  And with others, such as the gang database, he has suggested that he's satisfied, instead, with tighter rules to govern it. 

Just what role the NYPD's policies play in crime rising and falling, regardless of brass, has long been a hotly debated topic in social science. Some studies credit NYPD deployment for crime drops; other studies have come to opposite conclusions. And still others note that crime is falling nationwide.

Calls to fire Tisch, a billionaire heiress to a real estate fortune and longtime municipal bureaucrat, intensified over the past week amid a series of revelations, including that her department let an officer retire before he could face a disciplinary trial for fatally shooting a man in Queens who was in the throes of a mental crisis. She later apologized.

The calls also grew louder after the shooting by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week on the Manhattan-Bronx border of a Dominican man who was living illegally in the United States. Critics decried the NYPD's response to protests in the shooting's aftermath.

On Tuesday, Tisch appeared with Mamdani for the first time since the intensified calls for her ouster. The two spoke at the unveiling of new names on a police memorial in lower Manhattan. Tisch, who does not, by practice, answer questions on topics beyond her choosing, declined to comment on the calls for her ouster. 

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.