The post-election query on everybody’s lips has lastly been answered: NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch will stay in her function when Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes workplace Jan. 1.
Tisch’s reappointment is a reduction for the thousands and thousands of New Yorkers involved that Mamdani has not shed his previous “defund the police” concepts.
On her watch, crime has come down for the primary time in years.
However Tisch’s acceptance of the job is the start, not the top, of her potential conflicts with Mamdani.
The mayor-elect and the commissioner will likely quickly conflict on myriad points — and Tisch will not be lengthy for the submit in spite of everything.
The very first thing to acknowledge about Tisch’s resolution is that it confirms what we already knew: She’s a consummate civil servant, devoted at the beginning to the great of her metropolis.
Her profession is an affidavit to that reality: Regardless of coming from wealth, she labored her method up via the NYPD ranks.
She then took the unglamorous job of Mayor Eric Adams’ sanitation commissioner.
In that function, she managed to get New Yorkers to start out placing their trash in bins — one thing town has struggled with for many years.
As NYPD commissioner, she has been a stalwart defender of her officers, and of the crime discount methods which have confirmed again and again to maintain New York protected.
She additionally introduced integrity and character to an administration that appeared in any other case to go from scandal to scandal.
Learn on this gentle, her alternative to remain on at NYPD makes excellent sense.
It’s an extension of her dedication to serving town, even when it means working with individuals she disagrees with.
Sadly, a kind of individuals is the soon-to-be mayor.
And there shall be a lot of alternatives for the 2 to conflict.
Mamdani needs to eliminate town’s gang database and the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group — each instruments which can be central to the focused, centered method to policing that has been an indicator of Tisch’s tenure.
Mamdani has stated he gained’t attempt to improve the NYPD’s sworn headcount.
With the drive now shedding 300 officers a month, which means nearly sure attrition — placing Tisch as commissioner on a worse footing, with fewer officers to deploy.
Mamdani needs to maneuver some policing capabilities below his new Division of Group Security.
Even when most of these capabilities are minor, it is going to imply one other voice pushing Mamdani on public security, probably diluting the commissioner’s sway.
And conflicts not but foreseen are nearly inevitable.
Think about, for instance, if an NYPD officer kills a civilian in a contestable officer-involved capturing.
Will Tisch and Mamdani see eye-to-eye on such a scenario — or will they take reverse sides at an emotionally fraught second?
In brief: Whereas Tisch could have signed on, that doesn’t imply Mamdani sees the world her method.
And within the first few months of his administration, there shall be many alternatives for us to see in the event that they’re on the identical web page, or in the event that they’ll be repeatedly butting heads.
In fact, it’s doable for a progressive mayor to work with a tough-on-crime commissioner — Invoice de Blasio famously introduced Invoice Bratton again throughout his mayoralty.
However Mamdani’s asks of the NYPD are extra excessive than de Blasio’s have been.
And de Blasio’s tenure was infamously marred by poor relations with the NYPD, embodied by the tons of of officers who turned their backs on the mayor as he spoke on the funerals of slain officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
Extra regarding to these of us who assist Tisch’s method of doing issues is the chance that her appointment is short-term.
The announcement is a part of Mamdani’s marketing campaign to seem extra average than his radical historical past implies.
However a conflict between the mayor and the commissioner may end in Tisch’s resignation — or in Mamdani’s firing her.
That may then give him carte blanche to say, “I attempted!” and appoint somebody nearer to his personal ideological predilections.
In different phrases, whereas New Yorkers ought to be glad that Tisch is within the room with their incoming mayor, they shouldn’t take Wednesday’s announcement as a definitive signal that Mamdani has modified his spots.
It’s one factor to do what dozens of metropolis leaders have urged and hold Tisch on.
It’s one other factor completely to really pay attention to her.
Nonetheless, if Tisch does should stroll, it could be to her long-term benefit.
She will be able to show her civil-servant bona fides but once more, however keep away from the mess a Mamdani administration will nearly actually carry.
Charles Fain Lehman is a Manhattan Institute fellow and senior editor of Metropolis Journal.
