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NYPD to revamp officer training, boost 311 request responses, Commissioner Tisch says
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Brittany Kriegstein
Published Feb 10, 2026
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Brittany Kriegstein / Gothamist
By
Brittany Kriegstein
Published Feb 10, 2026
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NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch is promising the “most significant overhaul” of police training in decades, as the department seeks to build on a year of record declines in violent crime across New York City.
Officers will now be required to participate in recurring weeklong programs to brush up on topics including tactical skills, de-escalation and legal standards, Tisch said Tuesday. She added that the revamp will help officers "exercise informed judgement under pressure.”
“After the police academy, the only things officers are consistently required to be retrained on are firearms qualification and CPR,” she said during her annual State of the NYPD address in Midtown. “They want training that reflects the situations they’re actually encountering on the streets.”
The roughly 30-minute address was Tisch’s first major speech under Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration, following her appointment to the position under Mayor Eric Adams in November 2024. She laid out a plan to make the NYPD more effective this year through technology and other moves, including a new digital dispatch system for quality of life-related 311 calls and new digitized logs for the department’s nearly 80 precincts.
Tisch also described an administrative change that would restructure the Bronx into two patrol zones, bringing about 200 more officers and other resources to the borough, where crime rates are higher than in the rest of the city.
“ When systems are outdated, people end up compensating with workarounds and delays and guesswork, and that is where accountability and efficiency break down,” the commissioner said.
In her speech, Tisch touted the city’s historic crime drops last year and last month, which had record-low levels of gun violence and murders. And she outlined specific areas for improvement for her department, especially in how officers interact with New Yorkers on a daily basis.
Part of ensuring those interactions are safer, Tisch said, is providing officers with more advanced equipment, such as new Tasers that work better from farther away. Gothamist reported in 2024 that Tasers had failed to immobilize people roughly 40% of the time in tense standoffs between police and residents, according to police data — often leading officers to use deadly force.
Police have fatally shot two people in the city so far this year, according to NYPD reports compiled by Gothamist, and officials said a Taser was ineffective in one of those incidents. Last month, police said officers shot and injured 22-year-old Jabez Chakraborty after he came at them with a knife in his Queens home, though they did not use a Taser on him. The city expedited the release of the officers’ body-camera footage after Chakraborty’s family said they had requested medical transport, not police, to help him during a mental health episode.
Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, a union representing NYPD officers, said in a statement that the training initiative is a “good step forward.” But he also expressed concerns that other police departments still offer better pay and quality of life.
Tisch said the other tech initiatives will allow police to “work smarter, not harder,” and explained how the new 311 dispatch system will help them handle those calls “with the same structure and accountability” as 911 calls.
An upgraded Domain Awareness System — the network of sensors, databases and software that delivers information to officers’ cellphones and computers — will help police better track suspects and fast-moving events “in real time,” she said.
The commissioner gave examples of how, with the upgrade, an officer driving on the FDR Drive could be alerted that a stolen car has passed a license plate reader up ahead, and how an NYPD supervisor at a crime scene could see live drone video.
“I want to be clear, this is not AI. This is not facial recognition and this is not an automated tool to track people's movements throughout the city,” Tisch said.
Beyond the five boroughs, Tisch highlighted the department’s work monitoring terrorist networks abroad in partnership with federal agencies, saying this led to more than 100 arrests of people allegedly connected to those networks last year.
But she said the NYPD is still waiting for authorization from the White House to shoot down suspicious drones, which she called “the one threat that keeps me up at night.”
“Tactics that once belonged to militaries are now increasingly accessible to smaller groups and individuals, and commercial drones can be easily adapted into weapons of war,” Tisch said. She added that the department needs to be prepared for upcoming large-scale events, like the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the New York area.
The NYPD is investing millions of dollars in “drone mitigation” equipment and training, she said, so that police can start that work “as soon as we are legally allowed to do so.”
The White House referred to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for comment, which did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
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new york city
nypd
public safety
Brittany Kriegstein
Brittany Kriegstein covers all breaking news around New York City, with a focus on crime and gun violence. Got a tip? Email Brittany at [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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