NYC’s new top cop is a technology enthusiast with 2 weeks on the job. Now Jessica Tisch’s NYPD hunts for the killer of a CEO
CNN
By Ray Sanchez, CNN
A week after taking over the nation’s largest police department, Jessica Tisch found herself on Wednesday reassuring New Yorkers that investigators would “not rest until we identify and apprehend the shooter” who brazenly gunned down the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare outside a Manhattan hotel.
The high-profile, high-tech manhunt for the masked shooter who killed the head of one of the country’s largest health insurers is the first major hurdle for a new NYPD commissioner long familiar with department culture and a strong proponent of surveillance technology in crime fighting.
“I want the department to go to the next level – more than just catching bad guys – but how do we use the technology,” Mayor Eric Adams said during a CNN appearance with Tisch the week before she was sworn in on November 25. “She’s planted the seed for some of the technology we’re looking at now.”
Among the first clues in the frantic hunt for the assailant who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson were numerous videos and images – from city streets and from a Starbucks store.
The masked shooter was “lying in wait” for Thompson outside the New York Hilton Midtown Wednesday morning, according to Tisch.
When Thompson approached the building, a dark-hooded figure with a gray backpack appeared and shot him in the back, surveillance video shows.
Thompson stumbled forward before turning to face the assailant and falling. The gunman calmly walked toward the CEO and continued to shoot, video shows.
Thompson was pronounced dead less than half an hour after the incident.
“It’s never the kind of attention that you want on New York City,” Kenneth Corey, a former NYPD chief of department who worked with Tisch in the intelligence bureau, told CNN of her handling of the CEO shooting investigation so early in her tenure as the department’s 48th commissioner. “So her challenge is really managing that.”
‘Case is going to get made on technology’
Investigators told CNN the assailant crossed the street from the hotel, fled through an alleyway, and got on an electric bike before heading north toward Central Park, where he was last seen on video at 6:48 a.m.
Video from a Starbucks near the hotel showed the assailant buying a bottle of water and two energy bars roughly 30 minutes before the shooting, a senior police official said.
Tisch, a 12-year NYPD veteran, led the development and implementation of the Domain Awareness System, which the city described in announcing her appointment as “the heart of the NYPD’s crime fighting and counterterrorism operations.”
The system, which brings together information from license plate readers, tens of thousands of closed-circuit television cameras, facial recognition tools and phone call locations to identify people, has been criticized by civil liberties groups.
“This case is going to get made on technology, as so many are today, and she knows probably better than anybody what technology the NYPD has available to it because she brought most of it into the department in the first place,” Corey said.
“And remember that not all of that technology belongs to the NYPD or belongs to government,” Corey added. “It’s really being able to leverage that technology and to piece it all together.”
Indeed, investigators tasked with tracing the assailant’s steps have been combing through a mountain of surveillance video, and examining evidence he may have left behind throughout the city and at the scene of the shooting. The search includes thousands of police-monitored and private surveillance cameras.
Police are also developing clues from a burner phone believed to have been dropped by the suspect when he fled the shooting scene. The phone could yield fingerprints, DNA and –– if technicians can unlock it –– other clues to the suspect’s identity, investigators said.
As of Thursday, police were still trying to access the phone, a law enforcement official said.
“So you’re going to stitch together, for starters, a video timeline that starts with the shooting and shows this person fleeing,” Corey said. “But they’re also going to rewind that and track him.”
‘We have revolutionized law enforcement technology’
During her 12 years at the NYPD, including a stint as deputy commissioner of information and technology – and 17 years overall in city government – Tisch has embraced a high-tech approach to law enforcement. She also oversaw NYPD 911 operations.
“She spearheaded efforts to use technology to transform the NYPD’s fundamental business processes, including how officers are dispatched and respond to 911 calls, take crime reports, investigate, and search for wanted or missing persons,” the city said in announcing her appointment.
The mayor’s office credited Tisch with providing every member of the force with a smartphone for access to real-time information in the field. She joined the NYPD – as a civilian – as a counterterrorism analyst in 2008 and headed the implementation of the NYPD’s body-worn camera program, according to the city. She graduated from Harvard College, Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School.
“I think we have revolutionized law-enforcement technology. We have given officers access to data where and when they need it: in the field and in real time,” Tisch told the Harvard Law Bulletin in 2019.
That high-tech sleuthing has come into play this week as detectives use video and other investigative tools to piece together a timeline of the shooter’s movements.
Surveillance video appears to show the suspect leaving the subway at 57th Street before the shooting. A massive search of Central Park occurred after detectives reviewed video of the man believed to be the suspect leaving the park on West 77th Street and no longer wearing a backpack.
And an extensive video canvass led police to a hostel on the Upper West Side, a police official told CNN. The NYPD released photos of a smiling man standing at the front desk of the hostel. Police said he is “wanted for questioning.” It’s unclear when the photos were taken.
Investigators also have video of the suspect on the Upper West Side carrying what appears to be an electric bicycle battery, the sources said.
‘Impressive and unconventional resume’
Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton – who coauthored an article this week in City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank – praised Tisch’s “impressive and unconventional resume” as well as her “legal savvy and business acumen.”
“One question she seems especially well-suited to answer is how the NYPD can leverage new force-multiplier technologies—including AI, facial recognition, drones, and risk-assessment tools—to do more with less, given the recent struggles with recruitment and retention,” the City Journal article said.
Tisch also served as commissioner of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and, most recently, as head of the Sanitation Department. Tisch’s father, James Tisch, is CEO of the Loews Corp.
Tisch told the Harvard Business Review that she “very randomly” decided to join the NYPD in 2008 after graduating from law school. She thought it would be difficult finding a job during the financial crisis.
“I can’t even imagine what someone like me would do at the Police Department,” she recalled saying when a friend suggested she work for the NYPD.
She is the second female commissioner at the nation’s oldest police department. On CNN last month, Tisch described herself as “a person who takes challenges head-on.”
“She’s not an outsider and I think that’s important,” Corey said. “And, you know, the old adage is, the only thing that cops hate more than change is the way things are right now. When she sees where change needs to be made, where efficiencies can be gained, she’s not going to be deterred.”
CNN’s Karina Tsui, John Miller, Brynn Gingras, Mark Morales, Amanda Musa, Lauren Mascarenhas, Annette Choi and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.
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