Police Commissioner

Jessica S. Tisch

Jessica S. Tisch was appointed the 48th police commissioner of the City of New York by Mayor Eric Adams in November 2024. Immediately prior, she had served as the commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation, a post she held since April 2022.

Commissioner Tisch began her career in public service with the NYPD in 2008, when she was hired as an Intelligence Research Specialist in the department’s Counterterrorism Bureau. She went on to serve as Counsel to the Police Commissioner, and the CTB’s Director of Policy and Planning. In both capacities, she administered a major systems integration contract for the build-out of the NYPD’s Domain Awareness System (DAS), and led the development and department-wide roll-out of DASLite, designed to aid in real-time response to 911 calls, investigations, and crime mapping and analysis. Also with the Counterterrorism Bureau, Commissioner Tisch negotiated more than two dozen Memoranda of Agreement with other government agencies and private-sector stakeholders involved in the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative (LMSI), the Securing the Cities program, and specialized infrastructure protection initiatives; drafted the first-ever Public Security Privacy Guidelines to regulate the collection, retention, sharing, and use of data collected through a wide variety of LMSI technologies; and led the final review, drafting, interagency clearance, and production of the NYPD publication, “Engineering Security: Protective Design for High Risk Buildings.”

When Police Commissioner William Bratton returned to the lead the NYPD in 2014, he appointed Tisch as the Deputy Commissioner of Information Technology, tasking her with the advancement and democratization of the NYPD’s data both inside and outside the department, including the development of the department’s strategy for leveraging mobile platforms, enhancing data analytics to promote data-driven decision-making, and incorporating new and emerging technologies. In this role, Commissioner Tisch oversaw 911 operations, managed the Domain Awareness System, directed the implementation of the NYPD’s department-wide body-worn camera program, and oversaw the distribution of smartphones to every officer and tablets for every police vehicle. She was also responsible for the modernization of CompStat, the revolutionary crime data-tracking and organization platform, as well as the NYPD’s computer-aided dispatch system and the Enterprise Case Management System, among others.

In November 2019, Tisch was appointed by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio as commissioner of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication, where she was responsible for New York City’s IT infrastructure, establishing and consolidating citywide IT standards and guidelines, managing the city’s telecommunications franchises, the NYC311 system, and more. Notably, Commissioner Tisch led the IT response of America’s largest city during the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

In April 2022, Mayor Adams appointed Tisch as the commissioner of the NYC Department of Sanitation, the largest such department in the world. Under her leadership the agency implemented several successful policies and procedures – including improvements to citywide trash containerization, recycling collection, street cleaning, snow removal, and more.

Before joining the NYPD, Commissioner Tisch previously worked at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, the Law Firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the Domestic Policy Council of the White House, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

Commissioner Tisch holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, in Government from Harvard University, a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School, and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School. She was admitted to the New York State Bar in 2011.