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Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday unveiled a new Office of Community Safety in New York City, describing it as a first step toward carrying out a campaign promise to reduce the police department’s role in responding to mental health emergencies.
Mamdani said his earlier vision was far broader, including a $1 billion-per-year agency that would dispatch civilian workers rather than police in non-criminal emergencies. Under the plan announced at City Hall, however, the new office will start small, with only two staff members and few immediate changes to how the city handles 911 calls.
“As he signed the executive order” at City Hall flanked by criminal justice advocates, Mamdani said the administration would “ushering in a new era for our city’s crisis response,” while he framed the shift as an attempt to address what he described as a broken system. He said officers handle 200,000 mental health calls per year and argued, “That is not a system that is working. Today marks the end of it.”
For now, Mamdani said the administration will not replace police across the board, but instead will look to expand funding and support for an existing program called B-HEARD. That program, started in 2021, dispatches mental health workers in response to 911 calls for people in emotional distress, and a recent audit found it has languished in New York due to lack of funding and support.
Supporters of Mamdani’s overall approach said police can escalate confrontations with people in emotional distress and that trained mental health professionals could better meet those calls. The mayor pointed to the police shooting of Queens man Jabez Chakraborty, whose family called 911 because he was acting erratically, saying it was an example of a situation he argued would benefit from mental health workers.
Critics, including those within city government, said the proposal downplays how many 911 calls still require police response. At a City Council hearing Wednesday, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch estimated that about 2% of calls for service would be removed from the police department’s jurisdiction and told lawmakers, “You need to send the police when there’s a call for a violent person.”
The Office of Community Safety will be led by Renita Francois, who previously oversaw former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to reduce violence in public housing. The office will also house other city programs intended to reduce shootings through violence interrupters, combat hate crimes, and provide services to victims of sexual assault, among others.
Public officials who backed Mamdani’s announcement said it merits time to develop. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams warned that the new approach may face problems as it scales up, saying, “There will be some mistakes,” and adding that similar mistakes occur in the police department as well.