By Spectrum News Staff and Ayana Harry New York City
UPDATED 6:30 PM ET Nov. 20, 2024 PUBLISHED 12:40 PM ET Nov. 20, 2024

View full article here: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2024/11/20/mayor-adams-sanitation-jessica-tisch-nypd-commissioner-appointment/

November 20, 2024

Mayor Eric Adams has appointed Department of Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch the next leader of the NYPD.

Tisch will become the second woman police commissioner in the NYPD’s 179-year history when she officially steps into the role on Monday.

Thomas Donlon has been serving as interim NYPD commissioner since his predecessor, Edward Caban, resigned in September. Tisch is the fourth person to lead the department for Adams since he took office less than three years ago.

“Commissioner Tisch is a 12-year veteran of the NYPD, and a 17-year veteran of city government who has dedicated her professional life to serving the people of New York City,” Adams said at a news conference Wednesday.

“I need someone that’s going to take the police department into the next century,” he added. “I need a visionary. I need a person that can look at how we do everyday operations, and do what she has done over at the Department of Sanitation and the other fields that she has provided the city government.”

Tisch started her career at the NYPD as a counterterrorism analyst before rising to the rank of deputy commissioner of information technology, overseeing the agency’s 911 operations, Adams said.

“She spearheaded efforts to use technology to transform the NYPD’s fundamental business processes, manage the implementation of the NYPD’s body-worn cameras, and drove additional efforts to improve transparency and public access to the NYPD by modernizing CompStat,” he said. “Much of the technology you see now in the New York City Police Department started under Commissioner Tisch, and we want to continue to see that grow.”

Before Adams named her sanitation commissioner in April 2022, Tisch served as commissioner of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, now known as the Office of Technology and Innovation.

Over the last two years, Tisch has cleaned up the streets of all five boroughs, spearheading an effort to move trash off sidewalks and into garbage cans. She has also worked collaboratively with council members.

“As the chair of the sanitation committee, she has done an exception job through oversight. always gave us the questions and answers we needed,” Democrat Councilmember Shaun Abreu, who represents parts of Manhattan, said.

The Department of Sanitation’s current first deputy commissioner, Javier Lojan, will become acting sanitation commissioner effective Monday, the agency said.

At Wednesday’s news conference, Tisch thanked Adams for appointing her before directing remarks toward members of the NYPD.

“I want you to know that I believe very deeply in the nobility of the police and the profession of policing,” she said.

“In my dozen years at the department, I had the opportunity to work with some of the most extraordinary public servants, people who run toward the danger when everyone else runs away,” she added. “It is now my privilege to lead you, and I’m looking forward to coming home.”

In a statement released after Adams’ announcement, Police Benevolent Association president Patrick Hendry, whose union represents thousands of active and retired NYPD officers, said he hoped to work with Tisch to address “challenges” faced by members of the agency.

“Through the numerous recent changes in the NYPD’s leadership, the challenges confronting police officers on the street have remained the same. We are critically understaffed, massively overworked and completely unsupported by a justice system and an oversight regime that care more about punishing cops than helping us get dangerous criminals off the streets,” Hendry said. “We hope to partner with Commissioner Tisch to make real progress on these issues as quickly as possible. The future of the NYPD and the entire city depends on it.”

In his own statement, Detectives’ Endowment Association president Scott Munro said members of his union, which serves around 20,000 active and retired NYPD detectives, were “elated by this choice.”

“We know we will work well with her,” Munro said. “She understands the NYPD. We can count on her.”

The head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, which represents around 13,000 active and retired NYPD sergeants, also responded to the news Wednesday.

“The SBA congratulates Commissioner Tisch on her appointment and we look forward to working with her on many important critical issues impacting NYPD Sergeants and in particular, finally fixing the ongoing wage disparity within our rank that has left over 1,200 of our Sergeants earning far less than the police officers they supervise,” SBA president Vincent Vallelong said.

Several council members told NY1 they’re optimistic about the new commissioner’s leadership.

“There’s only one priority for the NYPD. It’s keeping the public safe. I mean, everything else is just noise,” Republican Councilmember Joe Borelli, who represents parts of Staten Island, said. “So, as long as the department stays focused on that mission and that mission alone, I think the new commissioner will be very successful.”

“She is brilliant and what she does is look at the problem and find a solution,” Democrat Councilmember Gale Brewer, who represents parts of Manhattan, said.

By Thomas Tracy

View full article here: https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/10/25/nyc-contract-negotiations-with-nypd-sergeants-falls-apart-union-requests-outside-mediator/

October 25, 2024

Contract negotiations between New York City and NYPD sergeants — many of whom are now getting paid less than some police officers they oversee — have completely broken down and led to the union to declare an impasse with their contract negotiations and asked for the assistance of an outside mediator, the Daily News has learned.

Vincent Vallelong, the president of the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association has filed a “Declaration of Impasse” with the city’s Office of Labor Relations after being repeatedly snubbed by the city over requests for salary raises.

By filing the declaration, the union is requesting the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to assign an outside mediator to handle future negotiations.
The impasse comes as the Adams administration repeatedly boasts that it has successfully negotiated contracts “with unions representing nearly 97% of the city’s workforce.”


Over the last 20 months, the city has negotiated contracts with the Police Benevolent Association, United Federation of Teachers, United Probation Officers Associations and Uniformed Sanitation Workers’ Union, to name a few.

The city’s sergeants haven’t had a contract in two years because of the wage disparity involving 1,275 of them after the city recently increased the salaries of rank-and-file police officers.



The 1,275 sergeants are now making less than many of the officers they supervise, Vallelong said.
“The city is not even taking our calls [on this issue],” Vallelong told the Daily News. “I have now twice sent emails to Mayor Adams to sit down with us and work this out and there’s been no communication whatsoever.

“There’s no other avenue to go,” Vallelong said about the request for a mediator.
It’s the first time the union has requested outside help to handle negotiations with the city, he said.

“It is time for an outside entity to step in and do the job OLR is incapable of doing themselves,” Vallelong said in a message to his members this week.

“We have rung the bell over and over. It is time for adults to answer the door and do the job they were hired to do. If not, we will need a New York State appointed mediator to step in so this egregious situation can be corrected.”

Vallelong hopes that the mediator will “talk some sense” into the city.


“They’re not thinking straight,” Vallelong said about the Office of Labor Relations.
An email to the city for comment about the failed contract negotiations was not immediately returned.

Under the expired contract, the base pay for sergeants, who supervise several cops at a time while responding to 911 calls, ranges from $98,000 a year at the beginning to about $118,000 within five years.

After the newest contract with the PBA, experienced police officers can earn about $115,000, SBA members said.

The city put itself in a bind by increasing rank-and-file police officer wages without providing comparable increases to supervisory ranks, Vallelong said.

“Now you have new sergeants making less than top-pay police officers,” the union president said. “The OLR didn’t realize your salary can’t be less than what it was before you get promoted.

There’s no other rank on the job this has happened to.”
The city is spending millions to level the playing field and have begun promoting sergeants to the highest pay level, Vallelong said.

During contract negotiations, the SBA provided several possible solutions to even the scales, including a more equitable pay scale program, but the city didn’t want to hear any of them, Vallelong said.

Police officers become sergeants after studying and taking a civil service exam, so a great deal of work and effort goes into becoming a sergeant — something the rank and file may not want to do if they know they can get the same salary as a cop if they work long enough, Vallelong said.

“Every chief on the job goes through my rank,” he said about the sergeant position.

“What message are you sending when you begin telling people that they can take this job, but at a lower pay than your current one?”