NYC’s Next Police Commissioner

The Power Play Behind NYC’s Next Police Commissioner: An Investigation

How billionaires, business elites, and institutional force shaped the most consequential appointment of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty before he even took office

November 13, 2025

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The Unlikely Alliance

When Zohran Mamdani stood on a debate stage in late October and announced his intention to retain Jessica Tisch as New York City’s police commissioner, he formalized one of the strangest political marriages in recent memory. The 34-year-old democratic socialist who once called the NYPD “racist, anti-queer, wicked, and corrupt” was pledging to work with a billionaire heiress whose family spent over $1.3 million trying to defeat him.

But this wasn’t a choice born of political strategy or shared vision. It was capitulation to raw power—a textbook case of how economic elites and institutional forces constrain even the most progressive electoral victories.

This investigation reveals the mechanisms of that constraint: the backroom pressure campaigns, the calculated silence of political leaders, and the glaring absence of organized resistance that left Mamdani with what he viewed as no alternative. It’s a story that raises fundamental questions about who really governs New York City, and whether democratic socialism can survive contact with the machinery of state power.

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The Billionaire Commissioner

Jessica Sarah Tisch, 44, represents a phenomenon increasingly common in American governance: the billionaire public servant. Born into the Tisch family—ranked 43rd wealthiest in the United States with an estimated $10 billion fortune—she embodies the revolving door between private wealth and public authority.

Her grandfather, Laurence Tisch, served as CEO of CBS Network in the 1980s and co-founded the Loews Corporation, a conglomerate spanning insurance, hotels, energy, and packaging. Her father, James Tisch, currently serves as president of Loews. The family’s business model, according to Forbes, centers on acquiring failing companies and profiting from their turnaround.

On her maternal side, Tisch’s grandfather Philip Hiat served as a Reform rabbi and police chaplain in the New York City Housing Authority Police Department in 1972. At her November 2024 swearing-in as NYPD commissioner, Tisch held his badge and took her oath on her grandmother’s Bible—family touchstones she invoked to establish her credentials for the role.

But Tisch’s path to One Police Plaza wasn’t paved by family connection alone. After earning both JD and MBA degrees from Harvard in 2008, she began her career in the NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau under Commissioner Raymond Kelly. There, she helped build the department’s vast surveillance infrastructure, particularly systems targeting Muslim communities that later drew criticism from civil liberties organizations and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigations.

Over the subsequent 16 years, Tisch moved through a series of high-profile city positions: Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology at the NYPD (2014-2019), Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (2019-2022), and Commissioner of Sanitation (2022-2024). Mayor Eric Adams appointed her as the 48th NYPD Commissioner on November 20, 2024, just weeks before Mamdani’s election.

Her tenure, though brief, established a clear ideological stance. Tisch defended the NYPD’s controversial gang database—which civil rights groups denounce as racist and arbitrary—and oversaw training sessions that labeled keffiyehs and watermelons as antisemitic symbols in the context of Palestine solidarity. She blamed bail reform and Raise the Age laws for post-pandemic crime increases, claims contradicted by available data from the Data Collaborative for Justice and John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Most controversially, under Tisch’s watch, the NYPD shared sealed arrest records of Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia with federal immigration authorities, facilitating her detention in Texas. While Tisch claimed the information was provided for a “money laundering investigation,” the records became evidence in civil deportation proceedings—a collaboration that critics argue violated both city sanctuary policies and constitutional protections.

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The Socialist Challenge

Zohran Kwame Mamdani’s rise represents the most significant electoral victory for democratic socialism in the United States since Eugene Debs. Born in Kampala, Uganda in 1991 to postcolonialist academic Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair, he arrived in New York as a child and grew up witnessing the city’s transformation into a playground for global capital.

His 2025 mayoral campaign, backed by over 100,000 volunteers and the 8,800-member NYC chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, centered on a radical affordability agenda: fare-free buses, universal childcare, a rent freeze on rent-stabilized units, city-owned grocery stores, and a $30 minimum wage by 2030. He promised to create a Department of Community Safety to handle mental health crises and other non-violent calls, reducing police involvement in situations where armed response escalates danger.

Crucially, Mamdani also vowed to disband the Strategic Response Group, the NYPD’s notorious protest-policing unit. Created in 2015 ostensibly for counterterrorism, the SRG rapidly evolved into what the New York Civil Liberties Union describes as “one of the most dangerous and unaccountable arms of the NYPD.” Its training manual explicitly identifies “BLM movement, Occupy Wall Street, and Anti-Trump Demonstrators” as examples of “violent crowds.”

The SRG’s budget exploded from $13 million to over $145 million within a year. The unit maintains roughly 700-800 officers equipped with riot gear, semiautomatic rifles, and military-grade acoustic weapons. Between May 2020 and January 2021, NYCLU monitors documented the SRG’s presence at every instance of kettling and all but one instance of use of force at protests. Human Rights Watch’s investigation of the June 2020 Mott Haven protest found the SRG’s conduct constituted “serious violations of international human rights law.”

During the 2024 pro-Palestine protests, the SRG played a central role in violent crackdowns at Columbia University, NYU, and City College. On April 30, 2024, between 600 and 700 officers—many from the SRG—descended on Columbia in what NYCLU monitor Isabelle Leyva described as “like a scene from some kind of war film.” They used chainsaws to breach Hamilton Hall (renamed Hind’s Hall by protesters), deployed flash grenades, and one officer “accidentally” discharged a firearm. Students emerged with swollen faces, broken bones, and concussions.

Mamdani’s promise to eliminate this unit directly threatened the architecture of protest suppression that business elites view as essential to their interests.

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The Pressure Campaign

The coordinated effort to control Mamdani’s NYPD appointment began immediately after his June 2025 Democratic primary victory. Sources familiar with the negotiations describe a multipronged strategy involving business leaders, political power brokers, and Democratic Party officials.

At the center stood Kathy Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, an organization representing the city’s corporate elite. Wylde, who once stated that “public safety is the number one fiscal stimulus,” orchestrated meetings between Mamdani’s transition team and business leaders. The message was consistent: Keep Tisch, or face relentless opposition.

Bloomberg News reported that one hedge fund executive articulated the calculation bluntly: “Public safety is the number one fiscal stimulus.” The subtext was clear—undermine police power, and capital investment would dry up. The threat was both economic and electoral: business interests would fund primary challengers and mount media campaigns portraying Mamdani as soft on crime.

Governor Kathy Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries reportedly conditioned their endorsements on Mamdani’s commitment to retain Tisch. This Democratic establishment pressure proved particularly consequential. Both politicians had initially remained silent after Mamdani’s primary victory, a conspicuous absence that signaled to donors and activists alike that the party was withholding legitimacy.

Hochul’s eventual endorsement came only after Mamdani publicly announced his intention to keep Tisch. The governor appeared, somewhat awkwardly, at Mamdani campaign rallies in the final weeks before the general election—a show of unity that required Mamdani’s concession on police leadership.

Meanwhile, members of the Tisch family contributed more than $1.3 million to Fix the City, a super PAC explicitly organized to defeat Mamdani. The contributors included Tisch’s mother, Merryl Tisch, and several other relatives. (Her father, James Tisch, notably did not contribute.) The donations underscored the family’s political investment in blocking a democratic socialist from power.

Yet when asked whether these contributions signaled Jessica Tisch’s lack of interest in serving under him, Mamdani dismissed the concern: “No, because I’m not hiring the family. I’m hiring the commissioner.”

The reality was more complex. Tisch herself never publicly addressed Mamdani’s overtures, maintaining strict silence about whether she would accept the position. An NYPD spokesperson stated only that “it is not appropriate for the police commissioner to be directly involved or to seem to be involved in electoral politics.” But Crain’s New York reported in late October that Tisch had privately told associates she would be willing to serve in a Mamdani administration.

This calculated silence served a strategic purpose: it maintained pressure on Mamdani while preserving Tisch’s political positioning. If Mamdani backed away from his offer, she could claim vindication. If he persisted, she retained leverage.

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The Vacuum of Resistance

What made this pressure campaign devastating was not its intensity, but the absence of any organized countervailing force. Despite the democratic socialist movement’s robust organizing capacity during the campaign, it failed to mobilize around the NYPD commissioner question.

There was no shortlist of alternative candidates. No coalition of community organizations rallying behind a reform-minded police leader. No coordinated media strategy articulating what progressive police leadership might look like. The left, having invested enormous energy in electing Mamdani, seemed unprepared for the next phase: governing.

This organizational weakness reflects a broader strategic deficit in progressive movements. While democratic socialists have built impressive electoral infrastructure—NYC-DSA alone mobilized thousands of volunteers who knocked on over 1.6 million doors—they have not developed comparable capacity for shaping government institutions.

As journalist Ken Klippenstein observed after Mamdani confirmed his intention to keep Tisch, the decision represented Mamdani accepting a “straitjacket.” Spencer Ackerman noted that “Tisch cooperated with ICE to lock up Leqaa Kordia,” highlighting the moral compromise inherent in the arrangement.

But absent an alternative, what choice did Mamdani have? Alex Vitale, a policing expert who wrote in The Nation urging Mamdani not to retain Tisch, acknowledged this dilemma: “The left doesn’t build talent pipelines for police brass, and I’m not arguing that we should start. We want to reduce police resources, staffing, and technology.”

This creates a paradox. To reduce police power, progressive mayors need to control police leadership. But building alternative leadership pipelines requires engaging with the very institutions movements seek to transform or abolish. It’s a tension the American left has yet to resolve.

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Police Unions: The Silent Threat

Conspicuously absent from the public battle over Tisch’s retention was New York’s most powerful police union, the Police Benevolent Association. The PBA represents 24,000 rank-and-file officers and has a long history of making or breaking mayors.

In 1992, the PBA organized a rally of thousands of officers to protest Mayor David Dinkins’s proposal for an independent Civilian Complaint Review Board. The demonstration devolved into a drunken riot, with cops shouting racial slurs, storming City Hall, and attacking journalists. It was a display of raw institutional power that helped sink Dinkins’s reelection.

Mayor Bill de Blasio faced similar resistance. After his election on a police reform platform, PBA officers literally turned their backs on him at official events. When NYPD officers Eric Garner and Rafael Ramos were murdered in 2014, PBA President Pat Lynch blamed de Blasio’s rhetoric for creating an “anti-police” environment. During the 2020 George Floyd protests, the union gleefully publicized the arrest of de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, at a demonstration.

The PBA’s contract with the city expired in July 2025, just as the mayoral race intensified. Yet the union made no endorsement in the race and issued no statement about Tisch. This silence was strategic. By withholding its position, the PBA maintained maximum leverage for upcoming contract negotiations while avoiding early conflict with a likely victor.

The union’s wait-and-see approach suggests it views Mamdani’s modest reform proposals as potentially tolerable—or at least as less threatening than the political cost of open warfare. But this calculation could shift rapidly. If Mamdani moves forward with his Department of Community Safety and it competes for NYPD resources, the PBA will have both motive and means to resist.

History offers guidance on what such resistance might look like. Police unions have consistently deployed work slowdowns, public attacks on elected officials, and coordinated political opposition to defeat oversight measures. The PBA’s current restraint may simply reflect tactical patience rather than genuine acquiescence.

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Tisch and Mamdani: An Impossible Partnership?

The policy differences between Tisch and Mamdani are stark and, critics argue, irreconcilable. Where Mamdani supports Palestinian liberation and has criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza, Tisch is a staunch Zionist who wears a Star of David necklace to official functions and has stated, “My Jewish identity is not something that I put on and take off. It is who I am and who I will always be.”

At the Anti-Defamation League’s “Never is Now” conference earlier this year, Tisch defended the NYPD’s policing of Palestine protests, praising officers for maintaining order during what she characterized as antisemitic demonstrations. She has publicly credited the department with protecting Jewish New Yorkers from rising antisemitism.

Mamdani’s support base, by contrast, heavily overlaps with Palestine solidarity activists. He founded a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter in college and has consistently voiced support for Palestinian rights. His campaign was bolstered by voters angered by U.S. support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

This fundamental clash is not merely ideological—it has immediate operational implications. If large-scale Palestine protests occur in 2026, will Mamdani order or permit the same brutal crackdowns Tisch orchestrated under Adams? The question isn’t hypothetical. Any major escalation in Gaza or the West Bank will likely trigger demonstrations in New York City.

Mamdani has stated he’s developing an alternative approach to protest policing, but the details remain vague. A settlement agreement from a lawsuit over the 2020 George Floyd protests now limits when the NYPD can deploy the SRG to demonstrations, establishing a four-tier system based on crowd size and behavior. Under this framework, SRG deployment is supposed to be restricted to “tier 3” protests involving probable cause for arrests.

Yet evidence suggests the NYPD has largely ignored these restrictions. In a March 2025 City Council hearing, NYPD Chief of Special Operations Wilson Aramboles testified that the SRG had been deployed to protests 205 times in just three months—a frequency that strongly suggests routine use rather than emergency response.

Mamdani’s promise to disband the SRG altogether would eliminate this problem, but only if he follows through. Tisch’s presence as commissioner creates obvious pressure to preserve the unit, or to replace it with a functionally identical formation under a different name.

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The Department of Community Safety: A Test Case

Mamdani’s signature public safety proposal—creating a civilian Department of Community Safety to handle mental health crises, homelessness issues, and other non-violent situations—represents his clearest attempt to reduce police power without explicitly defunding the NYPD.

The model draws on successful programs in other cities. In Eugene, Oregon, the CAHOOTS program (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) dispatches teams of medics and mental health workers to crisis calls. Data shows CAHOOTS handles roughly 17% of Eugene’s 911 calls, with police backup required in less than 1% of cases. The program costs about $2.8 million annually—a fraction of what police response would cost—and has significantly reduced both arrests and use of force in mental health situations.

Similar initiatives have emerged in Denver (STAR program), Oakland (Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland), and other cities. Early results suggest these approaches improve outcomes for people in crisis while freeing police to focus on violent crime.

But implementation faces substantial obstacles. Police unions consistently oppose such programs, viewing them as threats to department jurisdiction and resources. In Baltimore, where violence interrupters work to prevent retaliatory shootings, police have actively undermined the program. Officers view interrupters as criminals, and interrupters report feeling targeted by police harassment. The NYPD arrested two violence interrupters in 2024.

Mamdani has framed his proposal as solving a problem police don’t want: responding to situations where armed officers’ presence escalates rather than resolves crises. He often notes that police themselves complain about being called to mental health emergencies and homeless encampments.

But this framing misunderstands police institutional interests. Departments fight to maintain control over all public safety functions not because officers enjoy every call, but because jurisdiction equals resources equals power. A Department of Community Safety handling tens of thousands of calls annually would require significant budget allocation—money that might otherwise flow to the NYPD.

Tisch’s role in this tension is crucial. Will she facilitate the new department’s growth, even if it means reduced NYPD budget share? Or will she resist, making implementation difficult and highlighting failures? The answer likely depends on how Mamdani and his team manage the relationship.

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What Happens Next

Mamdani takes office January 1, 2026. Several key moments will reveal whether the Mamdani-Tisch arrangement can survive contact with reality:

The SRG’s Future: The unit’s top officer filed for retirement the day after Mamdani’s election victory—a telling sign that senior leadership expects change. But will Mamdani actually disband the SRG, or will Tisch persuade him to merely “reform” it? The settlement agreement limiting SRG deployment may provide political cover for dissolution, but business interests strongly prefer maintaining rapid response capacity for protests.

Palestine Protests: Any major demonstration related to Palestine will test the partnership immediately. If NYPD officers assault protesters, Mamdani’s coalition will fracture. If police show restraint and activists perceive it as insufficient, Mamdani faces criticism from another direction. The dynamics are nearly impossible to navigate successfully.

Budget Negotiations: Mamdani has promised to reduce NYPD overtime spending, which consumed $700 million in fiscal year 2024. This creates direct conflict with the PBA and other unions, which use overtime both as income supplement and as political leverage. (Unions have historically staged work slowdowns, then highlighted resulting crime increases to argue for more funding.)

Community Safety Launch: Actually creating and funding the Department of Community Safety will require not just mayoral decree but City Council approval and complex interagency coordination. The NYPD controls most relevant data, infrastructure, and expertise—giving Tisch enormous power to either facilitate or obstruct implementation.

ICE Collaboration: Continued cooperation between NYPD and federal immigration authorities would be politically devastating for Mamdani, whose base includes immigrant rights activists. But Tisch has defended such collaboration as necessary for “criminal investigations.” The Leqaa Kordia case established a troubling precedent that likely will repeat unless Mamdani establishes clear boundaries—and enforces them.

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The Broader Implications

The Mamdani-Tisch situation illuminates fundamental contradictions in the American left’s electoral strategy. Democratic socialists have achieved remarkable success at winning elections, but their transformative agendas consistently collide with institutional resistance.

The pattern is now familiar: A progressive candidate runs on radical change, energizing young and working-class voters. They win, often by mobilizing constituencies that political consultants deemed unreliable. Then they confront the actual machinery of governance—career bureaucrats, police unions, business coalitions, hostile state legislators, and federal agencies that don’t share their vision.

Compromises follow. Some are pragmatic, others capitulation. Activists feel betrayed. Opponents claim vindication. The next electoral cycle becomes harder to win.

This dynamic has played out in cities across America. In Minneapolis, voters rejected a ballot measure to replace the police department with a Department of Public Safety after business groups and police unions spent millions on opposition. In San Francisco, tech billionaires and real estate money funded the recall of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin. In Seattle, progressive candidates have won repeatedly but struggled to implement lasting police reform.

What differentiates New York is scale. As the nation’s largest city with its biggest police force, New York’s battles over public safety shape national discourse. Mamdani’s election has already been framed by conservative media as proof that “socialist” policies are ascendant in the Democratic Party. His administration’s success or failure will influence whether progressive candidates in other cities embrace similar platforms or tack toward the center.

For democratic socialists, the challenge is existential. If Mamdani can’t reduce police power in New York City with a clear mandate and robust organizational support, where can it be done? And if it can’t be done, what does that say about the viability of democratic socialism as a governing philosophy?

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The Left’s Next Move

The article from The Nation argues persuasively that blaming Mamdani for keeping Tisch misses the point. The real failure belongs to movements that didn’t create conditions where he could make a different choice.

Building those conditions requires several strategic shifts:

1. Institutional Knowledge: The left needs people who understand how police departments actually function—their budget processes, union contracts, operational structures, and political networks. This doesn’t mean creating alternative police leadership pipelines, but it does mean developing expertise to credibly challenge police power.

2. Alternative Narratives: Conservatives and police unions have spent decades building public consensus around “tough on crime” politics. Progressives need equally compelling narratives about what real safety looks like—stories, data, and policy proposals that meet people’s genuine fears while offering different solutions.

3. Sustained Organizing: Electoral campaigns mobilize thousands of volunteers for finite periods. But governing requires sustained pressure between elections. That means building organizations with capacity for multi-year campaigns around specific issues—not just moment-driven mobilizations.

4. Labor Alignment: Police unions are powerful partly because they’re unions. Progressive movements need deeper alliances with labor more broadly, including municipal worker unions that might support shifting resources from policing to social services. This is delicate work, but essential.

5. Electoral Accountability: NYC-DSA endorsed Mamdani, and he won as their candidate. The organization now has responsibility to hold him accountable while defending him from bad-faith attacks. This requires sophisticated political judgment—knowing when to apply pressure, when to provide cover, and how to build power in both directions.

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Conclusion: Power Is the Point

On November 12, 2025, Mamdani held a press conference introducing key members of his incoming administration. He continued to dodge questions about whether Tisch had formally agreed to stay on as commissioner. “I continue to retain my interest in keeping Commissioner Jessica Tisch,” he said—careful language that acknowledged both his desire and his uncertainty.

The ambiguity is fitting. This entire episode has been defined by what remains unresolved: whether Tisch will actually serve, whether she’ll implement Mamdani’s agenda if she does, whether the PBA will remain quiescent, whether movements will mobilize to push for more.

But one thing is resolved. The battle over who would lead the NYPD revealed how power actually works in New York City. Billionaires made demands. Political brokers enforced them. The left proved unable or unwilling to mount resistance. And a democratic socialist mayor-elect, despite winning 53% of the vote in a city of 8 million people, found himself with no viable alternative to accepting his opponents’ choice.

This is the reality of governance in late-stage capitalism: Electoral victories matter, but institutional power matters more. Until movements build capacity to match—or overcome—that institutional power, progressive elected officials will continue to govern under constraints their campaign promises never anticipated.

Mamdani was right when he told supporters at his victory celebration, “I’ll be the mayor.” But commissioners, police unions, business coalitions, and federal agencies will test that claim every single day. The coming year will reveal whether democratic socialism can survive the collision, or whether capital’s power to constrain elected government remains essentially unbreakable.

The stakes extend far beyond New York. Cities across America are watching to see if Mamdani can actually deliver on his promises or whether, like so many progressive mayors before him, he’ll be absorbed by the machinery he sought to transform.

As organizer and writer Alex Vitale argued in The Nation, “We won’t be able to push Mamdani, or anyone else, to undermine police power unless we become a force to be reckoned with.”

That force doesn’t yet exist. Whether it can be built before the forces opposing change consolidate their victory—that’s the question that will define not just Mamdani’s mayoralty, but the future of democratic socialism in America.

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Note: This investigation is based on public records, published reporting, and cited sources. Key sources include Gothamist, The Nation, NPR, NYC-DSA, NYCLU, and extensive city government records.