Commish Tisch Unveils New Quality of Life Patrols

Admittedly the State of the NYPD 2025 address drew a very pro-police crowd to Cipriani’s on Jan. 30, but it was still noteworthy that the newish NYPD Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, drew a standing ovation for a host of new initiatives she unveiled.

Chief among them is the introduction of a Quality of Life initiative whereby officers on patrol will enforce laws against low-level crimes. She said she is forming a new Quality of Life division and will soon name a chief to head the department.

In other initiatives, she also unveiled plans for zone-based policing; a new three-part subway crime plan; and expanded mental-health training to help officers defuse volatile situations.

The assemblage at Cipriani’s was heavy with the top brass, including Mayor Eric Adams, who did not speak, keeping a surprisingly low profile. It was his first public sighting since he announced late on Sunday, Jan. 26, that he was canceling public appearances due to an undisclosed medical emergency.

Tisch made sure to note the mayor was in the house. “I often tell people how we can complete each other’s sentences on policing and sanitation policy,” she said. “By the way, sir, rat complaints are down 23 percent so far this year. I’ve truly found a kindred spirit in this work, and I thank you for the trust you’ve placed in me.” She also noted Gov. Kathy Hochul was on the scene; she also did not address the assembled.

Then Tisch tackled the nitty-gritty problem that, while crime had dropped modestly over the past two years, the public is not feeling it.

“Our work must not only make people safe, but it must make them feel safe too,” Tisch said. “Our officers will not simply walk by someone who is violating the law and disrupting passengers. We are going to correct the condition.”

On the NYPD record, she said that crimes were down in four of the seven major crime categories. “I am proud to announce that over the past two months, index crime in New York City is down a whopping 16 percent–16 percent in December and 17 percent in January and double-digit reductions in four of the seven major crime categories, including murder, robbery, grand larceny and auto theft.”

And she made it personal. “New York City is my home, it’s where I grew up, and, like many of you, it’s where I’m raising my own family,” she said. “My appointment as Police Commissioner is not only the honor of my life; it’s the greatest responsibility of my lifetime, because I know exactly what’s at stake. And I want for my two young boys what we all want: a safe city . . . free from the fear of crime, violence and disorder.”

The Quality of Life division will feature “Q teams” responding to complaints. Q-Stat tracking, monitoring issues citywide, will be rolled out over the next several months to track those complaints the same way Compstat tracks major crime statistics.

“When neighborhoods are plagued by issues such as aggressive panhandling, unruly street vending, public urination, abandoned vehicles, it gives the impression of an unsafe community,” Tisch said. “For too long, we asked our cops to correct these conditions without sufficient direction. No more,” Tisch said.

“These Q-Stat meetings will bring our quality-of-life work into much greater focus, more accurately measure our effectiveness and re-center our approach to public safety,” Tisch said.

She said there will be a continuing push to counter “ the surge of random acts of violence that we’re seeing in the subways.”

And she said police are using crime stats to break down problem areas that are not necessarily precinct-wide and acknowledged that crime hot spots often leap precinct boundaries. “Zone-based policing is a hyperlocal, data-driven policing model,” said said.

“Right now, about 650 additional officers per day–who had previously been working desk jobs–are assigned to high-crime zones across the five boroughs, driving a big part of the crime reductions we are seeing right now,” she said.

Recidivism is a major problem and letting suspects go free without holding them until trial, or setting repeat suspects free without bail is demoralizing to the officer who arrests known repeat offenders again and again, Tisch said.

“The overwhelming majority of people who commit these violent acts have a long history of unlawful conduct in the transit system,” she said.

Quality of Life has been tried before in the city’s history, most notably when then-NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor Rudy Giuliani unveiled the “broken windows” policing strategy in the early ’90s. During the three-term reign of Michael Bloomberg, with Ray Kelly as top cop, a crime-fighting tactic known as “stop, question and frisk” was employed to drive down crime.

While crime was dropping to all-time lows through the 20-year run of both mayors, there was also a public backlash from some who felt the strategies unfairly targeted minorities.

Andrew Case, a lawyer with Latino Justice PRLDEF, told the Daily News that he feels racial profiling invariably follows such enforcement. “Quality-of-life policing is broken-widows policing,” he said. “It has been tried and it failed.”

Mayor Bill De Blasio ended the stop, question and frisk tactics of his predecessor when he declined to appeal a lower-court ruling that had gone against the city and the NYPD.

“ ‘Broken windows’ needs good leadership,” Peter Moskos, a professor in the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Gothamist. “We have to make sure that it’s not just getting stats for stats’ sake. You have to identify what the problem is, and then [broken windows] becomes a tool to address that problem.”