New York City Mayor Mamdani launches Office of Community Safety

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Zahran Mamdani on Thursday unveiled a new office dedicated to community safety, an interim first step toward fulfilling a major campaign pledge to reduce the role of police in responding to mental health emergencies.

Mamdani initially envisioned creating a $1 billion-a-year agency that would send civilian workers, rather than police, in non-criminal emergencies. However, his initial proposal is much more modest, launching with just two employees and few immediate plans to shift the city’s approach to 911 calls.

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As he signed the executive order at City Hall surrounded by criminal justice advocates, Mamdani said its scope would soon be expanded, “marking a new era of crisis response in our city.”

“Officers have to handle 200,000 mental health calls a year,” the Democratic mayor said. “This is not a working system. Today marks its end.”

For now, he said his administration will look to expand funding and support for an existing program, B-HEARD, which sends mental health workers in response to 911 calls of people in emotional distress.
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This program, which began in 2021, is one of several initiatives of its kind that have spread across the country in recent years. They have languished in New York, partly due to a lack of funding and support, a recent review found.

“We’re going to find out what it looks like when someone is willing to invest, not just financially, but also politically in this way of responding,” Mamdani said Thursday.

Supporters of Mamdani’s plan say police often escalate encounters with people in emotional distress, who would be better served by trained mental health professionals.

The mayor cited the recent police shooting of a Queens man, Jabez Chakraborty, whose family called 911 because he was acting erratically, as an example of an encounter that might benefit a mental health worker. The department said Chakraborty lunged at them with a knife.

Mamdani’s critics accuse him of downplaying the complexities of the city’s massive dispatch system while underestimating the number of calls requiring a police response.

At a City Council hearing on Wednesday, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch estimated that about 2% of calls for service would be removed from the department’s jurisdiction. “You have to send the police when there is contact with a violent person,” she said.

The creation of a community safety agency was one of the core campaign promises of Mamdani, who broke with his opponents by refusing to call for an expansion of the police department.

The Office of Community Safety will also house existing city programs to reduce violent shootings, combat hate crimes and provide services to victims of sexual assault, among other things.

It will be led by Renita Francois, who previously oversaw former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to reduce violence in public housing.

Mamdani made the announcement surrounded by supporters and elected officials, who praised the plan and urged New Yorkers to be patient.

“There will be some mistakes,” Public Defender Jomane Williams warned. “This happens in the police department, too.”