Mayor Mamdani on Tuesday rejected calls from his political base to fire New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch after federal immigration agents shot a man in the neck last week, injuring him.
“Tisch is the police commissioner. I have no intention of changing that,” Mamdani said in Queens Tuesday morning, his first press briefing since Thursday evening.
Mamdani went on to praise Tisch’s record, touting his work “rooting out corruption from the upper echelons of the NYPD” and overseeing a decline in murders and shootings across the city.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot an undocumented immigrant, Oscar Belgal, in his car while his 5-year-old son sat in the backseat. Belgal is currently in federal custody. He still has a bullet lodged in his neck and requires urgent surgery, his lawyers said on Monday.
Although the NYPD was not involved in the operation or the shooting, officers from the department responded to protests afterward. Social media videos show NYPD officers and protesters involved in physical confrontations, following which Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier was pushed to the ground.
Barry Williams / New York Daily News
Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a news conference after ICE agents shot and injured a man on Marble Hill Avenue near W. 225th Street on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in the Bronx. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch is pictured at far right. (Barry Williams/New York Daily News)
Beyond the shooting, some of Mamdani’s allies are expressing growing frustration over the issue of maintaining order. Mamdani ran on a platform that called for transformative changes in public safety – but those changes have largely failed to materialize, ten months into his term.
Mamdani largely deferred to Tisch on matters of policy and implementation, with a number of key operational elements still in place.
Mamdani has pledged to disband a controversial NYPD unit, the Strategic Response Group, end use of the gang database and establish a Department of Community Safety, which currently functions as an office. The number of summonses for minor offenses, including criminal summonses, increased during his mandate.
On Monday, Mamdani announced a series of changes aimed at improving police accountability, as well as a comprehensive review of the department’s use of force policies.
The Democratic Socialists of America, a national organization, called on Mamdani to kick Tisch on Saturday.
“We demand that Mayor Zohran Mamdani fire NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and use every power he has to drive ICE out of New York,” the DSA said in a statement.
And the New York local chapter of the DSA, which Mamdani called his “political home,” pressured him to fire Tisch if it failed to get federal immigration agents out of the city.
“ICE is a terrorist agency that must be removed from New York and abolished,” NYC-DSA said in a statement. “Jessica Tisch must remove ICE from New York and end the NYPD’s complicity with these terrorists. If the commissioner cannot end these injustices, she must be fired.”
ICE is a federal agency that does not require permission from the NYPD or the mayor to operate in the city.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, a close ally of the mayor, directly called on Tisch to leave his post: “The NYPD Strategic Response Group must be disbanded as quickly as possible and Commissioner Tisch must resign,” she said in a statement Friday.
Mamdani also attended the annual unveiling of the police memorial wall in Battery Park City on Tuesday, where he called it a “solemn privilege” to appear alongside Tisch and other NYPD leaders.
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