No city service is more vital than law enforcement, so it’s great to see former Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch off to such an encouraging start in cleaning up the NYPD, as its new boss.
The need for major house-cleaning at the Police Department was painfully obvious even before the bombshell sex-for-overtime scandal erupted last week.
And Tisch — tapped by Mayor Adams and sworn in just a month ago — has already been giving her broom a robust workout.
Over last weekend alone, she moved 29 officers into new jobs, including 16 who’d earned more than $100,000 in OT last year.
She accepted the resignation of the force’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey — who quit after The Post uncovered allegations he demanded sexual favors from a subordinate in exchange for overtime.
Tisch also pushed out Internal Affairs Bureau Chief Michael Iglesias for blowing off her requests to probe Maddrey for OT abuse, notably the overtime pay he granted Lt. Quathisha Epps.
Epps now claims Maddrey forced her to have sex with him in exchange.
Yet her overtime pay was itself an outrageous scandal: As The Post reported, she raked in a whopping $400,000 —$204,000 in OT — last year for an administrative job in Maddrey’s office.
Tisch also removed drivers for two high-ranking officials over OT concerns and pushed out a spokesperson who once called a Post reporter a “f–king scumbag.”
All this, after her predecessor Eddie Caban quit amid a federal probe into whether police were warning nightclubs connected to his ex-cop brother about inspections.
Plus, Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Philip Banks, who oversaw the police force, stepped down amid another federal probe.
In the wake of all these scandals and turnover, the department is in “shambles,” per one retired chief.
Meanwhile, corruption probes at City Hall have roped in the mayor himself, as well as several of his top staff.
Tisch’s task is to get the NYPD’s house in order so it can focus on its main mission: reducing crime.
Remember, major felonies are still up 30% from 2019 while signs of disorder proliferate — everything from the reek of weed in every public place (and thousands of unlicensed pot shops) to “asylum seekers” lounging on corners and raving loons walking the streets to all the toothpaste etc. locked up in every drug store.
Thank the state’s disastrous criminal-justice “reforms,” the radical de Blasio expansion of “sanctuary city” protections (among other Blas bumbles), a plague of woke prosecutors and judges and the work of the profoundly anti-cop City Council.
And while Adams won office vowing to prioritize public safety, he’s had little success getting Albany or the council to wake up to reality, even as NYPD-command confusion and scandal further sinks rank-and-file morale and handed ammo to the enemies of policing — all making crime-fighting even harder.
This is Tisch’s chance. She’s “in charge, and she wants to put an end to the out-of-control frat house atmosphere” at the NYPD, one police source told The Post.
“Things are different now than they were under commissioners [Keechant] Sewell, Caban and [Thomas] Donlon,” the source added. “The mayor is not going to protect anyone and no one is safe.”
Hear, hear.
New Yorkers should cheer Tisch’s aggressive approach.
Righting this ship can’t come soon enough.
