Shake Ups Ahead? Tisch Beat Out 14 Law Enforcement Types for Job as New Top Cop

Within two days of beating out 14 other law enforcement types and landing the job as the new NYPD Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, the former Sanitation Commissioner, made a ground breaking appointment with her chief of staff pick.

She appointed Ryan Merola, a longtime ally and an openly gay man to be her chief of staff on Nov. 27.

Merola had been Tisch’s chief of staff at the Sanitation Dept. for the past three years. And he had worked with her when she was an NYPD deputy commissioner of technology and earlier in her role in the counterterrorism department.

In making the appointment, she stripped NYPD deputy commissioner of public information Tarik Sheppard of the added chief of staff job he held briefly during the two-month stint when Tom Donlon was interim commissioner. Sheppard, who had gotten into a public shoving match with Donlon in a photo op at the NYC Marathon, is still, for the moment a deputy commissioner running press relations.

Observers took the appointment of Merola as a sign that Adams, who is facing an April trial in a five count federal corruption and bribery indictment, is letting Tisch pick her own top lieutenants.

“I looked at 15 candidates,” Adams said at a press briefing on Nov. 26, one day after Tisch had been officially sworn in, becoming the fourth person to hold the job since Adams took office in Jan. 2022. He said he narrowed the field down to three finalists.

He did not disclose the names of the other finalists but said they came from more traditional law enforcement backgrounds.

While Tisch, 47, had 12 years working with the NYPD as a civilian employee, she had never been a uniformed cop. Adams said he looked at the tech background of the Harvard-educated lawyer as a bigger plus than candidates from more traditional law enforcement backgrounds.

At the swearing in ceremony, Adams also addressed that she did not have a uniformed service police background. “A good manager can manage anywhere,” Adams said. “And I push back on anyone that believes she had to wear a police uniform to take the police department to the next direction...She is a well battle-tested leader.”

The following day, Adams continued to sing her praises. “I need someone that’s unafraid to move the traditional,” he said of his decision to move Tisch, from Sanitation Commissioner.

“Police Departments are extremely conservative on taking any changes. They are afraid of change. That is the history of policing,” Adams said.

That seemed to be sending a signal that Tisch will be able to shake up the department in ways that her three predecessors under Adams were not.

“The others that I interviewed, the last three, two of them, they were good law enforcement people, but they were just that. They were just going to be law enforcement. I need a law enforcement person and I need an innovator, to turn this department into what I know what it could become.

Perhaps to shore up police support with the old guard, Tisch invited three former top cops to her swearing in ceremony at 1 Police Plaza on Nov. 25: Ray Kelly, who had served under David Dinkins and Mike Bloomberg and has recently been critical of Adams; Bill Bratton, who served the first two years in the Rudy Giuliani administration and Dermot Shea, an NYPD careerist who served as top cop for two years under Bill de Blasio.

While Adams mentioned Keechant Sewell and noted that Tisch is the second woman to lead the NYPD in its 179-year history Sewell, the first woman top cop, was not at the ceremony.

Tisch herself invited four women she had worked with in her NYPD past who have been known to clash with the top brass over the years.

“As I was coming up in the department, there were four women who served as role models that are here today. These three-star chiefs took a sledgehammer to the glass ceiling at the New York City Police Department before my eyes. Chief Joanne Jaffe, Chief Kathleen O’Reilly, Chief Lori Pollack, and Chief Juanita Holmes.

“Thank you, chiefs,” Tisch said. “I promise to do for other women in this department what you did for me.”

She was sworn in using her grandmother’s bible while taking the shield number once used by her police chaplain grandfather. She was accompanied to the ceremony by her two sons, Harry, 13, and Larry, 11 and a cadre of top officials from the Sanitation Dept.

Javier Lojan, a 25 year veteran of the Sanitation Dept., who was deputy commissioner, was named acting commissioner.