NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch received strong backing Sunday from her former boss — ex-Commish Ray Kelly– as she dramatically moves to clean up the US’ scandal-ridden largest police department.
“I have a lot of confidence in the new police commissioner, Jessica Tisch. She worked directly for me,” Kelly said on 77 WABC radio’s ”The Cats Roundtable” show.
”She’s headed two major city agencies. She’s an excellent manager. She can be a pretty stern taskmaster. I think we’re on the right track,” he told host John Catsimatidis.
Tisch ousted dozens of NYPD bosses in a shocking Saturday purge, beginning with the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, a week after The Post revealed that the agency’s highest ranking uniformed police officer, Jeffrey Maddrey, was allegedly trading overtime for sex at headquarters.
Tisch began her career at the NYPD as a counterterrorism analyst in 2008 under Kelly, the longest serving police commissioner in the department’s history. She eventually became the deputy commissioner of information technology and oversaw the NYPD’s 911 operations before running the city Departments of Information Technology and Telecommunications and Sanitation.
Kelly, who served as police commissioner under Mayors David Dinkins and Mike Bloomberg, said there are pressing problems in the NYPD that Tisch is grappling with.
“We’ve had tough times in the department. We had the overtime scandal. People are leaving in big numbers,” he said.
“The department, having 54,000 people, is always going to have some issues, some problems. But I’m positive about what’s going to happen in the next year,’’ he said.
Kelly indicated he has less confidence in Mayor Eric Adams, who faces re-election in 2025 while fighting federal corruption charges at a trial scheduled in the spring. Adams maintains his innocence.
The Big Apple’s former top cop touted what he called the city’s 20-year law-and-order “renaissance” under ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Bloomberg, adding, “People sort of took that for granted.”
Kelly claimed the city’s quality of life and crime started to worsen under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and “I don’t think Mayor Adams has done anything to change that.”
He said the City Council has swung too far to the left, citing the influence of the Democratic Socialists of America.
”We were a little bit asleep at the switch, and this is what we got,” he said.
”The City Council has been a real problem … for the city and certainly for the police department. They want to tie the hands of the police. They continue to do it. They certainly hurt the quality of life in New York by doing that. These elections are going to be very important,’’ he said.
Kelly, who headed the US Customs Service under then-President Bill Clinton, was bullish about President-elect Donald Trump returning to the White House.
The former Marine said the nation needed a “course correction” after the border crisis and inflation that occurred during President Biden’s term.
“I just can’t believe what happened at the border. There was no explanation why that was going on,” he said.
Trump will “send a good signal that there is a new sheriff in town” by ramping up deportations of illegal migrants, particularly criminals,’’ the ex-top cop said.
“We need to protect our borders. Otherwise, we won’t have a country,” Kelly said.