Crime has dropped significantly in some key business districts in the first few months of 2025, mirroring an encouraging citywide trend, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a Crain’s New York event Wednesday morning.
There were zero shootings and a 40% drop in quality-of-life complaints on the long-troubled Roosevelt Avenue corridor in Queens during the first quarter of 2025, Tisch said. The zones covering Harlem’s 125th Street Business Improvement District and Downtown Flushing also saw zero shootings and a 40% decline in major crimes, she said, while the Jamaica BID had a 25% decline in major crimes.
The NYPD chief touted those numbers, which coincided with citywide declines in offenses such as robbery, auto theft, felony assault, murders and shootings — the latter of which totaled 140 during the first three months of the year, the lowest in recorded history, she said, and a 23% decline from the same period in 2024. There were also zero murders recorded in the subway system for the first time since 2018.
Tisch, now in her sixth month leading the NYPD, attributed the drops to “comprehensive data analysis, tailored strategy” and the department’s use of zone-based policing, an approach that began in 2023 in which officers are deployed to specific blocks or streets where crime is rising.
‘“Our zone deployment follows straightforward logic: uniformed police presence drives down crime and disorder,” Tisch said.
Despite those promising trends, Tisch’s remarks come at a turbulent time for the city, as the mayor who appointed her faces dismal re-election prospects while the Trump administration’s funding cuts and aggressive immigration enforcement sow fear and threaten to destabilize the city’s economy.
Multiple candidates running to unseat Mayor Eric Adams have said they would ask Tisch to stay on as police commissioner if they were elected, pointing to her efforts to stabilize the scandal-ridden department. Asked by Crain’s editor-in-chief Cory Schouten whether she would accept those offers, Tisch punted, saying she “cannot predict the future for myself, nor have I ever tried to.”
“I don’t really know very many of the candidates too well,” Tisch added. She said she is acquainted with the current front-runner — former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — but said she would “like to hear more” from the mayoral candidates about their criminal justice policies.
As for the Trump administration’s arrests of international students at Columbia University and elsewhere, Tisch said that “the NYPD played no part in any of those cases,” and reiterated that the department is legally barred from assisting the federal government with non-criminal immigration enforcement.
Other notable moments from Tisch’s appearance included:
She called for changing laws that govern electronic bikes and scooters to increase penalties for traffic violations. “Right now, if we summon you, you go to the traffic court, but there’s no real teeth on that — you don’t have to have a license,” Tisch said, slapping her wrist for effect. “So what’s going to happen if you don’t show up? It’s not like we can suspend your license.”The commissioner discussed the NYPD’s newly formed quality-of-life division, which will respond to non-emergency complaints such as noise and illegal parking. Tisch, a former city technology commissioner, said she was surprised to learn that her predecessors as police commissioner had not systematically measured the department’s success in responding to 311 complaints, which will be a key component of the new division.Asked about artificial intelligence, Tisch acknowledged that the department “hasn’t gone far with AI at all,” since the agency is constrained by privacy and security rules. “I predict over the next 5 to 10 years, we’ll be able to really leverage a lot of AI to help inform our policing,” she said.As commissioner, Tisch has tightened officer discipline by ending a longstanding policy in which the department would automatically close disciplinary cases against officers when the statute of limitations was approaching, and pushed for harsher punishment for officers who violate constitutional rights by performing unlawful searches. “We’re not going to discipline with re-training anymore,” Tisch said. “There are going to be real consequences for it, and that message has been sent clearly and received clearly in the department.”Tisch continued her campaign to reform the state’s evidence-sharing laws between prosecutors and defense lawyers, a hotly contested issue in ongoing state budget negotiations. Tisch asserted that rolling back the state’s 2019 reforms to the discovery process would be key to reducing retail theft by deterring repeat offenders — with 692 people responsible for 30% of all shoplifting offenses citywide last year.
