She’s still the boss.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani was forced to clarify Monday that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch still directly reports to him — after an executive order he signed sparked confusion and rumors that the city’s top cop had effectively been demoted.
The downgrade chatter erupted after Mamdani, in the order issued on his first day as mayor, gave his first deputy Dean Fuleihan the authority to supervise the NYPD.
Many City Hall watchers, including some reporters, interpreted the order as knocking Tisch several pegs down the administration’s totem pole — prompting Mamdani to clarify that nothing had changed.
“My police commissioner will continue to report directly to me,” he said at a unrelated news conference.
The executive order that Mamdani signed on New Year’s Day put the NYPD under the first deputy mayor’s portfolio in terms of nitty-gritty governance.
Recent previous mayors had typically done that until Mayor Eric Adams broke with the practice and put the top cop under the purview of his first deputy mayor for public safety, a position that had been dormant since the 1990s.
Phil Banks, who held the first deputy mayor for public safety post under Adams, faced accusations of meddling with the NYPD and eventually resigned amid a sprawling federal corruption probe.
While Mamdani’s executive order did little more than restore the police commissioner to the first deputy mayor’s bureaucratic purview, some construed it as a wholesale shakeup that threatened the NYPD itself.
Other rumors began to spread that Mamdani had stopped receiving daily intelligence briefings from the NYPD commissioner.
The swirling fears prompted the National Jewish Advocacy Center — which also had raised alarms about Mamdani revoking Adams’ executive orders on antisemitism — to send a pointed letter to the new mayor.
Tisch has widely been seen as a potential moderating force within the democratic socialist Mamdani’s administration. The pair have acknowledged differences on policies, including those related to Israel.
Mamdani, when asked about the change, stressed that being supervised on a day-to-day basis by the first deputy mayor is different than ultimately reporting to mayor.
“My police commissioner, just like my schools chancellor, will report directly to me,” he said.
“The executive order is in terms of the question of coordination. This is about the daily minutiae of coordination.”
