Jessica S. Tisch, the commissioner of the Sanitation Department and a member of a prominent New York family, will be the new head of the Police Department, the fourth of Mayor Eric Adams’s tenure.
Mr. Adams on Wednesday announced Ms. Tisch’s appointment at a news conference about the budget. His decision follows the resignation of Edward A. Caban on Sept. 12 and the subsequent appointment of Thomas Donlon on an interim basis.
The announcement came as a surprise after weeks of speculation over who would lead the Police Department permanently. Mr. Adams said that Ms. Tisch would start on Monday, and noted that she would be the second woman commissioner.
“I need someone who can take the Police Department into the next century,” Mr. Adams said at City Hall. “I need a visionary.”
Ms. Tisch, 43, has run the Sanitation Department since April 2022, pushing for clean streets as the city emerged from the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic and becoming internet famous as a scourge of rats. Before that, she held positions throughout city government — including at the Police Department, where she was deputy commissioner for information technology.
Ms. Tisch said at Wednesday’s news conference that she was proud of what the Sanitation Department had achieved during her tenure. She also praised the police officers she would soon be supervising.
“I’ve watched with pride over the past three years as you’ve driven down crime in many categories to prepandemic levels, both in our subway system and on our streets, and I know it has literally taken blood, sweat and tears,” Ms. Tisch said.
Ms. Tisch, who is part of the New York family that owns the Loews Corporation conglomerate and co-owns the New York Giants, has a reputation as a demanding boss who is not afraid to rethink how government works. She holds three Harvard degrees, including an M.B.A. and a law degree. She will take over a department that has about 55,000 civilian and uniformed employees, and that has been closely linked to the mayor, a former captain who appointed several associates to top positions.
Mr. Adams, who was indicted in September on federal corruption charges, and other City Hall officials pressured Mr. Caban to step down, clearing the way for Mr. Donlon to take over on Sept. 13. Federal agents seized Mr. Caban’s cellphone in one of five criminal investigations that have upended City Hall. His lawyers have said that he is not the target of an investigation.
Ms. Tisch is the city’s fourth police commissioner since the mayor took office in January 2022. The last time there were even three police commissioners in a single term was under Mayor James J. Walker, who resigned in 1932 while being investigated for corruption.
Ms. Tisch’s appointment ends the brief tenure of Mr. Donlon, a Bronx native with an extensive background in federal law enforcement, who had led the department as Mr. Adams navigated the scandals engulfing City Hall. Mr. Donlon, 71, had told friends and members of the department that he wanted to stay in the job permanently.
But a week after his appointment, he announced that F.B.I. agents had come to his apartment seeking documents that he had kept after leaving the agency more than 20 years ago. He also had friction with at least two of his top staff members, forcing his first chief of staff to leave about a month into his tenure and arguing publicly with the second at the New York City Marathon.
Many inside and outside of the Police Department said they hoped that the appointment of Ms. Tisch would end the uncertainty that has surrounded the department for months.
William Bratton, a former commissioner of the department who was head of the agency when Ms. Tisch was deputy commissioner for information and technology, said New Yorkers were going to be “very impressed” with Ms. Tisch. He described her as tough, articulate and “smart as a whip.”
“I’ve got a big smile on my face,” he said. “This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time.”
Ms. Tisch has received praise from the mayor and his inner circle for her efforts to move trash bags from curbs into cans and to implement curbside composting citywide. Mr. Adams did not announce her replacement, who will oversee an ambitious plan to move trash into on-street containers starting next June.
Chris Dunn, the legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called Ms. Tisch a “serious person” who he hoped would work with the organization to keep officers accountable for abuses.
“The disciplinary system right now is completely broken and it’s creating a culture of impunity from the top to the bottom,” he said. “That has to change for the Police Department’s legitimacy and effectiveness.”
Many inside the department were glad at the prospect of consistent leadership and praised the choice of a woman with management experience who wouldn’t need a primer on the department’s vast and byzantine bureaucracy.
“I’m relieved,” said Louis Turco, president of the Lieutenants Benevolent Association. “The word interim needs to be gone. We need consistency and the department needs stability.”
Detectives are “elated by this choice,” said Scott Munro, the president of the their union. “She understands the N.Y.P.D.,” he said. “We can count on her.”
Patrick Hendry, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement that Ms. Tisch had faced the same problems as the last three commissioners: a department that is “critically understaffed, massively overworked and completely unsupported by a justice system.”
“We hope to partner with Commissioner Tisch to make real progress on these issues as quickly as possible,” he said. “The future of the N.Y.P.D. and the entire city depends on it.”
Others were less optimistic.
Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy and civil rights group that has often criticized the department, said that as deputy commissioner Ms. Tisch created a surveillance system that had weaponized technology “against our most vulnerable communities.”
“For a mayor marred by scandal, indictment and blatant nepotism, this may stand as one of the worst appointments yet,” he said. “This would be a civil rights nightmare at any moment, but especially at the dawn of the new Trump administration.”
Mr. Adams, a Democrat who is running for re-election, announced restored funding on Wednesday for two police classes, which he said would put 1,600 new officers on the streets by next October.
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