The White House is expected to give the NYPD the authority to take out unauthorized drones found buzzing around major events, Tisch said during her 2026 “State of the NYPD” address at Cipriani’s in Midtown.
“If there’s one threat that keeps me up at night, it’s drones,” Tisch said. “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.”
The approval comes as the city hosts several FIFA World Cup events this year, as well as marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and the 250th birthday of the U.S., she noted.
As the department waits for final approval, the NYPD will continue to invest millions of dollars in mitigation equipment and train officers how to use it.
“We plan to be ready to commence drone mitigation operations as soon as we are legally allowed to do so,” Tisch said.
The nation’s largest police department, which can detect drones and has numerous drones of its own, has for several years backed proposed legislation that would allow it to electronically jam and disable drones seen as threats to public safety.
Currently, only federal agencies have the authority to take down a drone electronically. While hosting large events like last year’s 4th of July fireworks celebration, the FBI had to be on hand to work alongside local police to keep an eye out for suspicious drones.
Tisch noted last year that “things come up all the time in New York City … every day, and so we really need to be able to be nimble and have the authority to do drone mitigation ourselves.”
“As we’ve seen in Ukraine, the Middle East and even along our border the threats posed by weaponized drones is real and growing,” she added.
At the same time, the NYPD will be bringing an additional 200 officers to the Bronx as the department plans to divide it into two patrol boroughs.
The Bronx has always had just one patrol borough, while Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan have two.
“Bronx residents have raised this issue for years,” Tisch said. “They’re not asking for special treatment. They’re asking a reasonable question about fairness and capacity: why does a borough this large still operate under a structure that wouldn’t be acceptable elsewhere in the city? And they’re right to expect better.”
Beginning this spring, the department will divide the patrol borough in half — Bronx North and Bronx South — which she said will strengthen the NYPD’s ability to respond to emergencies and bring additional units, including homicide squads and narcotics and evidence collection teams, to the borough.
Last year, more than a third of the city’s shootings were in the Bronx, three times as many as in Queens and Manhattan, Tisch said. Nearly one million emergency calls came from the Bronx last year — more than Queens and equal to Manhattan.
Once the Bronx is divided, Staten Island will be the only borough with one patrol unit protecting it.
Tisch’s address comes as the NYPD experienced one of the city’s safest years on record with the fewest shooting incidents since the beginning of the CompStat era in 1994.
“Together, we have cleared away the rubble of crisis and we say with renewed certainty that the State of the NYPD is strong,” Tisch told members of the Police Foundation, which sponsored the breakfast. Mayor Zohran Mamdani was also in attendance.
“A year ago, I set clear expectations for the NYPD. New Yorkers deserved a police department that was stable in its leadership, disciplined in its operations, serious about its standards, and focused relentlessly on public safety,” she said.
“In 2026, that doesn’t change. Our crime fighting posture remains the same, the standards we hold ourselves to remain the same, and the commitment to support the noble men and women of the NYPD remains absolute.”
In 2025, NYPD investigations led to more than 100 arrests connected to foreign terrorist organizations, domestic extremists, lone actors, and other serious threats, Tisch said. Those arrests spanned eight foreign countries and nine U.S. states.
Other plans for the new year include a significant overhaul of officers’ in-service training that will cover a wide range of topics including tactics, de-escalation tips and lessons on legal standards and constitutional policing.
The NYPD also plans to roll out a new 311 dispatch system in which cops will be able to better track, respond to and close out quality-of-life offenses, digitize its precinct command logs and introduce an upgraded Domain Awareness System, known as DAS 2.0, which will bring real-time awareness directly to cops in the field.
Through this upgraded system, cops would be told if a stolen car passed a license plate reader ahead of them and cops can watch live drone footage at a scene as they reach the emergency, Tisch said.
©2026 New York Daily News, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
