Ten days after she took the oath as New York City’s 48th Police Commissioner, Jessica Tisch was notified of an early morning fatal shooting that now has her leading the biggest nationwide manhunt in recent memory.
Tisch informed the city of the killing at 6:40 am killing on December 4 with a briefing later that morning at Police Headquarters. She stood at a podium in the press room wearing a simple grey outfit and said what she was able to say that people needed to know.
“Good morning everyone,” the 43-year-old fledgling commissioner began. “In Midtown Manhattan early this morning, 50-year-old Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in what appears at this early stage of our investigation to be a brazen, targeted attack.”
This was her first big case, but she spoke with a confidence that people who know her say she has possessed since her Manhattan childhood. She took care to reassure the public that this was not a random sign of social unraveling in what the NYPD has made America’s safest big city.
“This does not appear to be a random act of violence,” she continued. “The victim was in New York City to speak at an investor conference. It appears the suspect was lying in wait for several minutes, and as the victim was walking to the conference hotel, the suspect approached from behind and fired several rounds, striking the victim at least once in the back and at least once in the right calf. Many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target.”
She was saying that those other people had not been in danger. But she was not minimizing the tragic outcome for the person who had been.
“The suspect fled first on foot, then on an e-bike, and was last seen in Central Park on Center Drive. Early this morning, the victim was removed to Roosevelt’s Hospital where he was pronounced. We’ve been in touch with his family, his friends, and his colleagues, and they’re very much in our thoughts and prayers.”
She managed to say that last bit without sounding rote.
“At this hour, the full investigative efforts of the New York City Police Department are well underway, and we will not rest until we identify and apprehend the shooter in this case. The women and men of the NYPD take enormous pride in the work that they do each day and each night to drive down crime and violence in our city.”
She was speaking as a life-long New Yorker who had been part of that effort until 2022, when she left to battle trash and rats as the city’s Sanitation commissioner. She had just returned to the NYPD on November 25. And she was asking the public to help by calling Crime Stoppers at 800- 577-TIPS if they had any information about the case, adding that there was a $10,000 reward. She again sought to reassure the public, most particularly since Wednesday night would be the annual Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center four blocks from the shooting scene.
“I want to be clear at this time, every indication is that this was a premeditated pre-planned targeted attack. Millions of people will be enjoying the tree lighting tonight among other holiday events, and the NYPD will be out there with them, keeping them safe.”
She had been speaking for just two minutes and 30 seconds. She had not wasted a word when she stepped back from the podium.
“For some preliminary details about today’s tragic incident, I pass it over to our chief of detectives, Chief Joe Kenny,” she said.
As Kenny stepped up, Tisch stood to the side, her hands folded before her. She is a rare instance where brains, talent and wealth seem to care who they belong to. She comes from one of New York’s richest families, but does not act like a rich kid and seems to understand that great wealth comes with an equal debt. She almost certainly would have still been able to progress from Harvard College to Harvard Law School to Harvard Business School by merit and hard work if she had a humbler background.
She had finished her third Ivy League degree with a strong sense of social responsibility that led her to take an administrative position in the police department when she was fresh out of school. She rose to NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Information and Technology and among other things provided the cops with smart phones connected to everything from criminal databases to license plate readers to surveillance cameras. She is credited with the biggest advance in law enforcement communications since the invention of the two-way police radio in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1933.
Those tools and more were being put to use along with a lot of old fashioned detective work as the department now headed by Tisch set to catching the CEO killer. His face was obscured by a mask in a video of the shooting and of him fleeing the scene. Detectives canvassed the city’s thousands of surveillance cameras. They got a break when they viewed video from when the suspect checked into an Upper West Side hostel. Police say he and a woman behind the counter had begun flirting and she had asked him to pull down the mask he was wearing. The result was an image that anybody who knew him would likely recognize.
At the same time detectives checking other cameras determined that the suspect had entered the bus station in upper Manhattan after the shooting. He did not appear to have exited and it seemed safe to assume he had departed New York on a bus. That made it all the more important for people outside New York to see the photo.
Tisch is not one to seek the spotlight and she had refrained from holding any other press briefings. But she had agreed to interview with CNN for reasons she made clear,
“We would appreciate you getting that photo out to your audience because we also have reason to believe that the person in question has left New York City,” she said as she and Kenny sat down with CNN. “So we want a wider audience to see the picture outside of New York City.”
She described what it had taken to get this crucial image.
“He’s been traveling and walking around the streets of New York City, largely in a mask with his face covered,” she said. “We had to go through lots of video evidence to get that one money shot of him with the mask down.”
Other video showed that when the suspect bicycled into Central Park on Wednesday morning, he still had a distinctive gray backpack he had at the time of the shooting. Video also showed that he did not have the backpack when he left. That indicated it was still there.
“Actually, now as we speak, we have a huge canvas going on in Central Park,” Tisch said. “We still have not found the backpack. And so we’re doing a whole sweep of Central Park to find that backpack, which we believe he dropped in Central Park. We’re using manpower, but we’re also using our drones.”
Persistence paid off Friday evening, when police found what appeared to be the backpack between some boulders behind the park’s carousel. The backpack was taken to the police lab in Queens for forensic examination. Detectives had already recovered a partial fingerprint and DNA from a water bottle the suspect purchased from Starbucks a half hour before the shooting.
When initially viewing the shooting video, detectives figured the suspect had an semi-automatic 9 mm pistol that repeatedly jammed as a result of an attached silencer. Closer examination suggests the weapon may have been a single shot Brügger & Thomet VP9 (Veterinary Pistol 9mm) designed to put down sick or wounded animals. It has a built-in silencer to keep the noise from spooking other creatures. The gun is similar to a “spy” gun used as an assassin’s weapon during World Wat II.
Meanwhile, the nationwide manhunt includes the police in Atlanta, which is the point of origin of a bus that the suspect appears to have taken to New York on November 24, the day before Tisch took the oath..
“The NYPD is the lead agency,” the Atlanta police said in a statement on Friday.
And the NYPD is being led by Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who could be one of the great ones.
