Crime Down, New Chaplains Tapped and Police Academy to Be Named for Steven McDonald

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who just stepped down as the leader of the 2.8 million Catholics in the Archdioces of New York, and Rev. A.R Bernard, founder of the Christian Cultural Center, a megachurch in Brooklyn, were tapped to be the no chief co-chaplains of the NYPD.

That move was among the highlights of a 45-minute stemwinder that NYPD Jessica Tisch delivered as part of the state of the NYPD address at Cipriani 42nd St. on Feb. 10 in which she noted a double digit decline in major crimes and some major new initiatives to modernize the department. The move to tap new co-chief chaplains comes after the beloved Rabbi Alvin Kass, who had served the NYPD for more than 60 years passed away in October.

Tisch introduced a long line of dignitaries who turned up at New York Police Foundation-sponsored breakfast, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was on hand but did not speak to the packed house of police supporters. Mamdani, who became one of the first mayor to skip an induction ceremony for a new Catholic archbishop in 100 years, did at least reportedly exchange pleasantries with the Archbishop Hicks at the breakfast.

Tisch delivered a lighhearted welcome to the religious leaders.

“Finally, I want to thank some of our esteemed faith leaders here today, especially Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Reverand A.R. Bernard. And I want to welcome Archbishop Ronald Hicks to our great city. Archbishop, I’m going to answer a few questions I imagine are on your mind, but you are too much of a gentleman to ask. Yes, we’re as strange as we seem, and no we’re not all conscious of it,” Tisch joked before addressing the serious side of serving as a chaplain.

“For generations, our Chaplains Unit has made sure that weight was never our officers’ to carry alone. They’ve helped them find their better angels and remember the calling that lives at the heart of this work.

“Last year, we lost the man who had long served as the moral conscience of this department–our beloved Chief Chaplain, Rabbi Alvin Kass, zichrono I’vracha.

“In the months since Rabbi Kass’s passing, I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about how that role should be honored and carried forward. I kept coming back to a single word–tzadik.

“In Jewish tradition, it means a righteous person–someone whose life embodies the moral clarity, compassion, and wisdom our officers rely on in their hardest moments.

And I’ll admit, the idea came to me in an unexpected place...while I was sitting at Mass,” Tisch said and adlibbed, “Don’t tell my rabbi.”

“What followed was extraordinary–not just one, but two tzadiks answered that call,” she said, noting that both will be formally installed at a ceremony at 1 Police Plaza on Feb. 24

Neither Dolan nor Bernard spoke at the ceremony, but Cardinal Dolan in a statement to Straus News said, “I love and respect the brave men and women of the New York City Police Department and am grateful to Commissioner Tisch for this opportunity to serve alongside my friend and brother, The Reverend A.R. Bernard, as an NYPD chaplain.”

Tisch also revealed that the NYPD Police Academy which moved from E. 20th St. in Gramercy Park to a state-of-the-art training facility in College Point, Queens in 2015, will be formally renamed the Detective Steven D. McDonald Police Academy. McDonald was a serving in the Central Park when he was shot three times by a robbery suspect on July 12, 1986 which left him paralyzed but continued to serve the NYPD following his promotion to Detective.

McDonald’s high standards meant he lived “a life that reshapes how the public understands this work and how this department understands itself,” Tisch said.

“Steven McDonald is truly the embodiment of who we want our officers to be,” Tisch said. His wife Patti Ann was pregnant with their son Conor, who is now an NYPD Captain in the DCPI press unit. Both were present for the announcement. Tisch said an official naming ceremony will be held on July 16–42 years to the day that then recruit-McDonald entered the Police Academy.

Tisch also announced a wide-ranging series of reforms and did not try to sugar coat some of the scandals that have rocked the department. She went from heading the Department of Sanitation to the head of the NYPD in November, 2024 to help clean up the department.

In her first state of the NYPD last year, she had only been on the job three months, and the department was rocked by federal corruption probes and sexual harassment scandals.

“I made promises to our cops, and to all the people we serve...When we got to work, the NYPD looked very different than it does today. A crisis of leadership. A department plagued by scandal. A public confidence deeply shaken. That was the reality that we inherited.

“Rebuilding meant stabilizing the chain of command and reestablishing expectations for how leadership functions at every level. It meant making difficult personnel decisions, confronting practices that had gone unexamined for too long, and restoring discipline around how this department operates day to day...

“Together, we have cleared away the rubble of crisis, and we say with renewed certainty that the State of the NYPD is strong.

The overall crime rate dropped 16.8 percent in 2025 and the subway crime rate was down 36.4 percent. The number of shootings was the lowest in recorded history.

Among the changes, the Bronx will be split into two borough commands, north and south, mirroring the structure set up in Manhattan and other boroughs.

The NYPD will launch what Tisch described as its most significant overhaul of in-service training in decades where officers take part in recurring, weeklong training programs throughout their careers. covering tactics, de-escalation, constitutional policing, legal standards and situational awareness.

A digital dispatch system will be rolled out for 311 jobs assigned to Q-Teams, the police units she introduced last year to monitor quality of life complaints.

And at long last, the tedious handwritten paper logbooks that were used in the department to record incidents since 1845 will transition to digital precinct command logs. That should be welcome news to anyone who has had to sit through tedious paperwork while precinct cops record their crime reports in longhand.

She said the drive for improvement will continue in 2026, “Because in this department, better has never been good enough. The work is never finished.”