Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at the issues facing Jessica Tisch as she moves from sanitation commissioner to police commissioner. We’ll also find out what the Columbia University football team did for the first time since John F. Kennedy was in the White House.
Today is Jessica Tisch’s first day as the police commissioner. She had spent the last two and a half years as the commissioner of a different city agency under Mayor Eric Adams — the Sanitation Department. He announced her new post last week.
At the Police Department, Tisch will face a long list of problems, not the least of which involves the public’s sense of safety. Assaults and rapes have jumped even as crime has inched down overall. But New Yorkers remain nervous about random attacks.
I discussed Tisch and the issues she will have to address with Maria Cramer, who covers crime and the Police Department for the Metro desk.
Why did the mayor decide to move her from the Sanitation Department to the police?
He said he was looking for someone with vision. What that vision is remains to be seen — she hasn’t sat down for a long interview yet.
We know that she knows the culture of the Police Department really well. She was there for a dozen years as an analyst and a deputy commissioner.
But things are different from when Adams appointed Keechant Sewell commissioner in 2022 or Edward Caban last year after Sewell resigned. The mayor is under indictment now.
Yes, and also, he is not anxious to appoint a fifth commissioner in his term. He’s already made history on that. No mayor has ever had four police commissioners in a single term.
Having somebody who is a known quantity, not just to the city but to him, was important.
And Tisch’s family, which is worth $10.1 billion, according to Forbes, is enmeshed in the city and has donated to Adams. She’s got family members who sit on the board of the Police Foundation, which is a nonprofit that is separate and independent of the Police Department but provides a lot of money for programs the department needs.
How was Tisch thought of at the Sanitation Department?
As someone who was mission-driven and was determined to change the way the city handles its trash.
Is sanitation commissioner really the most important job you could have? I would say it’s up there. It’s a job that can affect everyone’s quality of life. You see the rats and the bags of trash that they are attracted to. These are not abstract problems, and she dove into it and made a lot of people who worked for her believers.
By some accounts, her management style was demanding. The counter to that is she was demanding that a bureaucracy change, and when you do that you’re maybe going to rub some people the wrong way.
How much can she change the culture in the Police Department?
That’s what everyone is waiting to see.
The answer depends on how much power the mayor allows her to have. William Bratton, a former police commissioner, says that if she is to run this department the way she wants to run it, it has to be clear that everybody under her works for her, not the mayor. In other words, it’s not the mayor’s department, it’s the commissioner’s department. That has to be the tone.
But the mayor is heavily invested in the department. Being a former captain, he feels deeply connected, and there’s been a sense that he wants to run it. When he appointed her, he used words like “the team is in place to fight crime.” Is that his team or her team?
Sewell left last year, frustrated that Adams’s allies in City Hall and in the department were blocking promotions and staff appointments she wanted to make. Why won’t Tisch face the same problem?
I don’t know that she won’t. She might.
Keechant Sewell, who was incredibly qualified and well respected and beloved by the rank and file — you could see it — came in without knowing the culture of this department or the city. She’d spent her whole career in Nassau County.
But remember, the rank and file are more concerned about who their direct supervisor is than about an official they may only see at promotion ceremonies. One officer told me, “I don’t know what the big deal is, we’ve been changing commissioners around here like we change diapers.” What would make a difference is someone who does something about why they are overworked.
Tisch has never been a police officer. Does she understand what being a beat officer is like?
Some police officers are always going to wonder, “Does she really understand me, the billionaire heiress with the multiple Harvard degrees?” That’s on her to convince them.
She is the type of leader who will go out, talk to people, get her hands dirty. She did it at the Sanitation Department, literally — out there at 6 o’clock in the morning, meeting employees who are picking up trash, and she did it when she was in the Police Department before. She did ride-alongs and went to the scenes of shootings with the idea of trying to understand what officers on the street are facing.
Obviously that’s different from putting on the badge, wearing the gun and putting yourself in danger.
Weather
Today will be sunny with a high near 54 and a light breeze. Tonight will bring clouds and a 30 percent chance of showers, with a low around 47.
Central Park got 2.12 inches of rain in last week’s storm, according to the National Weather Service. But it didn’t help the city’s reservoirs much: They remain just below 60 percent full, when 79 percent would be normal for this time of year. The city’s drought warning continues.
More rain may be on the way. The service says there is a 50 percent chance of showers in the morning on Thanksgiving, and a 60 percent chance in the afternoon and evening.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Nov. 28 (Thanksgiving Day).
The latest New York news
An ex-Obama aide joins the mayoral race: Michael Blake, a former state assemblyman from the Bronx and a veteran of the Obama administration, joins a crowded field of candidates running against Mayor Eric Adams.
Trump’s surgeon general pick: Dr. Janette Nesheiwat is a medical director for CityMD, a chain of urgent care centers across the New York region. She has contributed to Fox News since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
End of an era: Blue Man Group, the wordless theatrical troupe of drumbeating, paint-splattering, baldheaded blue performers, will end its New York run after more than three decades and 17,000 performances.
Dining sheds disappear: Street-side sheds helped keep restaurants afloat during the worst of the pandemic. Now, for better or worse, new city rules are forcing their removal.
C-O-L-U-M-B-I-A!
The Jets and Giants are having seasons that their fans would rather forget. The Columbia University football team is also accustomed to losing. When the Lions beat Princeton, 16-13, in 1988 to end a 44-game run of defeats, The Times’s headline read: “Columbia Wins! That’s Right, Wins!”
But that was only one game early in what still turned out to be a losing season.
Over the weekend, Columbia did something it had not done since 1961: It became an Ivy League champion. Columbia finished in a first-place tie with Harvard and Dartmouth after it beat Cornell, 17-9, on Saturday and Harvard lost to Yale.
Columbia’s third-string quarterback, Caleb Sanchez, threw for 221 yards against Cornell, and Lions running back Joey Giorgi ran for 165 yards.
Columbia finished last in the Ivy League last year. For 2024, it brought in Jon Poppe as the coach. He had been an assistant coach at Columbia from 2015 to 2017 but then left for Harvard.
“I’m speechless to know that this actually happened after 63 years,” Poppe said after the game. “I’ll keep saying that.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Back in town
Dear Diary:
It was just before Thanksgiving, and I was finally back in the city after being away for several years.
My first morning in town, I was out for a run when I paused at a crosswalk to wait for the light to change. I was not back in full jaywalking mode yet.
As I stood there, a woman walked up and grabbed me by the arm.
“Join me,” she said. “They never kill two.”
— Heike Endemann
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Makaelah Walters and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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