1 month ago
26
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Weeks ago, Jessica Tisch was in charge of street sweeping and trash pickup. On Monday, she found herself overseeing a ferocious manhunt as the head of the Police Department.
Dec. 13, 2024, 10:15 p.m. ET
Jessica S. Tisch, New York’s police commissioner, was giving her two sons their morning cereal on Dec. 4 when she got a text from a deputy telling her that the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare had been shot dead on a Manhattan sidewalk.
“‘Kids, I’ve got to go’,” she said, and jumped in a car that drove her to police headquarters.
She ordered that photos of the gunman be sent to all officers as a manhunt got underway. She assigned 10 analysts from the intelligence bureau to work with detectives analyzing surveillance video that might have recorded the gunman’s movements. For five days, investigators scoured thousands of hours of footage, analyzed ballistics and dove in the ponds of Central Park to look for evidence.
They were not the only law enforcement agencies that sprang into action. In San Francisco, the police recognized a surveillance photo of the suspect as a man declared missing by his family, and told the F.B.I. in New York, which eventually passed the name to the New York police. The suspect was finally captured on Monday 280 miles away from Manhattan in Altoona, Pa., after a McDonald’s patron recognized him.
The case, which has transfixed the nation, was a first test for Commissioner Tisch, who has never been a police officer and just four weeks ago could have been called the city’s street sweeper in chief. As sanitation commissioner, she oversaw more than 2,000 garbage trucks, 450 mechanical brooms, 700 salt spreaders and dozens of specialized machines to clean and plow bike lanes.
Then Mayor Eric Adams appointed her to oversee about 49,000 employees at a law enforcement agency still emerging from chaos and turmoil — and the departures of three commissioners since June 2023.
The killing of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, placed the department under intense pressure. It thrust Commissioner Tisch, who was appointed on Nov. 20, into the spotlight.
