Perhaps the fourth time’s the charm: Last week, Mayor Adams appointed Sanitation Chief Jessica Tisch as his newest NYPD commissioner.

Tisch, who once served as the NYPD’s deputy IT commissioner, is good at data, so she’ll quickly understand that the city’s crime rate isn’t great.

She will serve the mayor well if she uses her independence to discuss this fact with the public and explain the problems and solutions.

What does Tisch inherit? Through mid-November, serious crimes (murder, rape, theft, assault, grand theft, burglary and car theft) are down 1.9% compared to last year.

But that’s the kind of crime it is still increased dramatically – 30.4% – from 2019, the year before all of New York State’s defendant-friendly criminal laws went into full effect.

The homicide rate is 12.1% above 2019 levels — and since the summer, the mayor’s progress here has slowed, suggesting distraction.

New Yorkers chose Adams because they experienced the largest increase in crime ever in such a short period of time; murders increased by 53% between 2019 and 2021.

So the audience had one decisivea double-digit drop in crime following Adams’ re-election.

Instead, crime rose 23.2% in his first year in office, and was up slightly by 2023 (statistically flat).

It is not enough for the mayor to say, as he did after a fatal stabbing in Manhattan last week left three people dead, that “we are still reviewing the suspect’s file, but there is a real question as to why he was the flight was.” street” after a short sentence for theft at Rikers. “He has some serious mental health issues that should have been investigated.”

That’s something the mayor could pardonably say in his first year in office, not his third: Why does this keep happening?

Tisch is in a unique position to impose some discipline on the mayor. Because of his charges, and because he is now only in office because the governor failed to impeach him, he has little room to interfere with her leadership of the NYPD.

After all, he ruined the department with his ill-conceived appointments of people like the late Phil Banks and Edward Caban, despite their own shady backgrounds.

If she leaves because he doesn’t let her do her job effectively, he’s toast.

Tisch should use this power to treat the public like adults who deserve to know the sober picture: No, New York does nowhere close to where we need to be with crime rates.

For starters, let the NYPD stop insisting that the subways are safe when we’ve already had ten murders this year, easily twice as many as before the coronavirus crisis.

She must also be clear whether she has enough agents to do the job.

Yes, Adams said when he announced Tisch’s appointment that he would cancel two Police Academy classes he had canceled. So next fall, 1,600 new officers will graduate, bringing the number of officers closer to 34,000.

But during the height of the Giuliani-Bloomberg anti-crime era, the NYPD’s ranks topped 40,000.

There is only so much the department can do with overtime. If she needs more officers, she should say so publicly.

Finally, Tisch, who helped upgrade CompStat, the police crime-fighting data system, should introduce data to better show what’s going on. not the police’s fault.

How many cases are being dismissed, from the number of arrests and citations they are issuing, compared to the few years leading up to 2019, when state lawmakers finished implementing their changes to bail laws, evidence discovery rules and underage suspects?

Instead of top police and the mayor pointing out problems with individually suspects, Tisch should make this an integral part of the publicly available and regularly updated CompStat: What happens to people who are arrested or given a summons once the NYPD’s responsibility is over?

Next, it should consider collecting and publishing data on migrant crime.

The Sanctuary City’s laws don’t preclude this, at least not if done indirectly: It could release regular reports on how many suspects list their addresses in migrant shelters, for example, or how many suspects have arrived in New York in the past three years. .

As Tisch said last week, “Let me take a moment to speak directly to New Yorkers. I hear you loud and clear. The mission is to keep you safe, make you feel safe and improve your quality of life.”

She can do that by being honest with us about the ongoing public safety emergency in the city.

Nicole Gelinas is editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.