Jessica Tisch was sworn in on Monday as the 48th commissioner of the Police Department as Mayor Eric Adams pushed back against criticism about a manager who has never walked a police beat leading a department of more than 34,000 officers.
“She can wear any uniform she wants and accomplish the task,” Mr. Adams said of Commissioner Tisch, who will be the fourth person to run the department during his administration. He added, “She is a well battle-tested leader.”
The commissioner, a 43-year-old Harvard Law School graduate who until last week was head of the city’s Sanitation Department, is the Police Department’s second female leader. During a brief ceremony at 1 Police Plaza, she promised to restore pride to an agency that has been rattled by scandal and uncertainty.
Observers said Commissioner Tisch, a former Police Department deputy commissioner, is facing a rash of daunting problems — low morale and overworked officers; demands from civil libertarians and progressive groups that the police be held more accountable for abuses; and worries from New Yorkers about public safety even as the overall crime rate has inched down in recent years.
On Monday, Commissioner Tisch gave no indication of how she would address these problems.
Nor did she address the scandal that has engulfed the department, which saw the resignation of Edward Caban as commissioner in September, after his phone was seized as part of a federal inquiry that has consumed Mr. Adams’s administration. Thomas Donlon, a former F.B.I. agent who most recently ran a private security firm, was sworn in as interim commissioner on Sept. 13.
In a speech that lasted about seven minutes, Commissioner Tisch recalled her first day at the Police Department on Oct. 1, 2008, when she started as an intelligence research specialist.
She said New Yorkers should feel confident in the department’s rank and file and said they do a “damn good job” of keeping everyone safe.
To officers, she said her “greatest hope is that together we will return this noble undertaking, this job of high moral purpose, to a time and a place where you want your children, your grandchildren, your nieces, your nephews to follow in your footsteps and become police officers.”
She also praised Mr. Adams, calling him a “courageous leader” who supported her ideas for the Sanitation Department.
“You have trusted my judgment, given me incredible latitude and, yes, independence,” she said.
Several former commissioners and chiefs have said that Commissioner Tisch’s ability to do the job effectively will rest on how much independence Mr. Adams gives her to pick her own executive team and make other appointments and promotions.
A department spokesman said she has not chosen her team yet.
Commissioner Tisch took the oath of office on her grandmother’s Bible, which her mother, Merryl, held as the commissioner’s sons, Larry, 13, and Harry, 9, looked on.
Sitting in a packed audience in the auditorium of 1 Police Plaza were two of her former bosses and commissioners, Raymond W. Kelly, who hired her in 2008, and William J. Bratton, who promoted her to deputy commissioner of information and technology.
When Mr. Adams appointed her to head the Sanitation Department in April 2022, the agency was still dealing with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Mayor Bill de Blasio had put the city on a “wartime budget,” slashing the spending for trash pickup and street cleaning. Rats appeared to be running amok in the city, and Ms. Tisch declared during a news conference, “Rats don’t run this city, we do.”
She pushed for trash to be put in containers on the street and in November 2022 announced the hiring of at least 200 more sanitation workers.
Sitting amid supporters on Monday were several former Sanitation employees.
Anthony Pennolino, the chief of department at the Sanitation Department, told Commissioner Tisch that he was “truly excited” to see her transition from “fighting grime to fighting crime.”
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