These children could possibly be future detectives.
Dozens of younger kids grilled Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch over the NYPD’s plans to guard them from rising gun violence and what’s it’s like being a “girl” main cops throughout a group occasion in Harlem.
“My title is Mariah,” one woman mentioned right into a microphone in entrance of her friends and police officers on the Police Athletic League (PAL) on Thursday.
“I’m 11, and my brother is 13, and my query is, with all this gun violence going round, how will you ensure that all children, it doesn’t matter what race, it doesn’t matter what gender, are protected?”
The query got here as youth gun violence throughout the Large Apple has exploded to historic highs, with a staggering variety of shooters and victims falling underneath the age of 18, in accordance with NYPD information.
In 2025, 14% of taking pictures victims and 18% of shooters have been youths, the very best seen because the metropolis began monitoring information in 2018, officers mentioned final month.
“Defending children and retaining children secure, particularly, is an important duty that I’ve, and that we have now on the New York Metropolis Police Division,” Tisch mentioned. “That’s duty primary on the NYPD.”
“By working very intently with group teams just like the PAL over many, a few years to ensure that children discover themselves heading in the right direction and don’t find yourself in gangs or with weapons,” is a method the division hopes to attain that purpose, the commish added.
The NYPD protects children from gangs and gun violence by “ensuring that cops are within the locations they’re wanted to maintain everybody secure,” Tisch mentioned.
Tisch cited traditionally low taking pictures numbers citywide in January to the children sitting on the gymnasium’s flooring.
One baby requested Tisch how lengthy she deliberate to stay round as town’s prime cop.
“Keelan simply requested me an important query, and it’s a query that was on lots of people’s minds for some time, which is, how lengthy do I need to be the police commissioner?” the commish responded. “And my reply to that’s, l love my job.”
Tisch, who has been commissioner for a yr, admitted that she doesn’t know the way lengthy she’s going to maintain doing her job underneath Mayor Mamdani, who previously referred to as for defunding the police, “however I adore it, and I hope to proceed doing it for some time.”
One other questioner requested her the way it feels “to be a woman police commissioner?” inflicting laughing among the many cartoon-watching crowd.
“So I’m a woman main the police division,” Tisch responded.
The mom-of-three then requested the kids in the event that they knew what number of different ladies had led the NYPD in its 180-year historical past.
“Eight!” One baby shouted.
“I’m the second lady to guide the New York Metropolis Police Division, and the primary lady to guide the New York Metropolis Police Division is my excellent buddy and my function mannequin when I’ve questions on my job,” Tisch mentioned of Keechant Sewell, a former Nassau County detective who preceded her within the NYPD’s prime job.
“And I need to say notably to the entire ladies within the room, you will be no matter it’s that you just need to be.”
One other baby struck a extra critical tone with their line of questioning for the commissioner: he needed to know the way the police cope with individuals who refuse to drop their weapons.
Tisch referred to as the query “heavy” and deferred to Assistant Chief Victoria Perry, who stood at her aspect.
“So first we begin with endurance,” Perry, who was in uniform, instructed the kids. “We ensure that we inform them to drop the weapon, and we inform them a number of occasions and after they don’t hear we have now different instruments that we use on our belts, which can be some mace, it could be a taser, and we cease them from utilizing the weapon.”
“What if they’re Taser proof?” the kid requested in response.
The query got here the identical week wherein cops shot a 22-year-old man after his household referred to as for him to be involuntary eliminated as a result of he was appearing violently and throwing glasses in opposition to a kitchen wall of their Briarwood, Queens, residence. He was left clinging to life on a ventilator.
However not all of the questions have been based mostly in actuality.
One little woman whispered her query into the police commissioner’s ear.
“She simply requested if the police exhibits are like actual life,” as Tisch turned to the viewers of 8 to 10 yr olds.
“And I’ve to say a few of them are and a few of them aren’t,” she supplied, explaining that some retired cops work on TV exhibits to assist make the fictional scenes extra lifelike.
“So a few of them are fairly like what you see in actual life.”
