New NYPD Commish Jessica Tisch Faces Slew of Issues as She Enters a Force Desperate for Change

The department’s reputation and notoriety have been the byproducts of two things: the danger of life on the city’s streets in the 1970s, ’80s, and early ’90s — and the department’s successful campaign to usher in an unprecedented turnaround for public safety.

In just a single generation, New York went from several years of more than 2,000 murders a year down to fewer than 300.

Popular though it may still be, the NYPD has also had its struggles — with rising crime and disorder, with officer retention and morale, and with its ongoing quest to build and maintain public trust in minority communities.

These are the persistent issues — not rare, headline-grabbing targeted assassinations — that will shape Commissioner Tisch’s tenure and ultimately define her success.

Previous NYPD commissioners had, through the 1990s and 2000s, been judged primarily on hard and fast measures of crime.

Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post

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Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow and head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is also the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most. William J. Bratton is a former commissioner of the NYPD. This piece is adapted from City Journal.

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