Zohran Mamdani, the most left-leaning candidate in this summer’s mayoral primary, proposed Tuesday to launch a new city agency that would be tasked with using nonpolice emergency responses to combat problems such as mental illness, homelessness and gun violence.
The agency would be called the Department of Community Safety and have an annual budget of $1.1 billion, according to a public safety plan rolled out by Mamdani, an assemblyman representing western Queens whose mayoral campaign has gained significant traction recently, especially among younger voters.
Setting himself apart from many other candidates in the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary, Mamdani, a socialist, isn’t proposing to hire more NYPD officers as part of his public safety plan.
That drew pushback from several fellow mayoral candidates, who have called for beefing up the ranks of the NYPD, which is seeing its lowest head count in decades amid high retirement rates, low retention figures and spikes in some crime categories as compared with the pre-COVID-19 era.
Mamdani’s blueprint argues more cops won’t be necessary, though, as his newly envisioned agency would absorb certain responsibilities currently in the NYPD’s wheelhouse, including responding to mental health emergencies. That will, in turn, free up officers — who have “a critical role to play” — to focus on more pressing police work, the plan maintains.
“This does not have a relationship with any reduction in the Police Department’s funding,” Mamdani said at a news conference in Manhattan. “This is clearly a new department that will provide public safety and will ensure that police can actually focus on their jobs.”
According to the 18-page plan, $605 million of the agency’s imagined budget would come from existing programs that would be transferred into the Department of Community Safety regime. That includes entities like City Hall’s Public Safety Division.
The remaining $455 million would be new spending. Mamdani’s plan says he wants to allocate that tranche by making “better use of existing funding, finding government efficiencies and cutting waste — combined with newly generated revenue where needed.”
Mamdani spokesman Andrew Bard Epstein said tax hikes on New York’s wealthiest individuals and corporations — which would require state government action — could be part of a formula to secure that funding.
Bard Epstein wouldn’t name specific agencies that’d be targeted for cuts to bankroll Mamdani’s new agency.
During the anti-police brutality protests of the pandemic era, Mamdani supported the “defund” movement to scale back funding from the NYPD. His new plan doesn’t use such rhetoric, but Bard Epstein did note Mamdani continues to believe the NYPD’s budget contains lots of bloat, including too much money earmarked for overtime and specialized police units like the Strategic Response Group.
Mayor Adams, whose bid for reelection faces serious headwinds amid his federal corruption indictment and surrounding scandals, argued jacking up taxes on the rich to bankroll Mamdani’s plan is a poor policy choice.
“You want to continue hemorrhaging the higher-income earners that pay into our tax base. … That hurts the economy,” Adams said at City Hall. “These pie-in-the-skies ideas that people are running prior to coming into the real work of running a city of this level of complexity is just unrealistic.”
The largest expenditure floated in Mamdani’s plan is a $362.8 million commitment to expanding the city’s mental health outreach programs. Among various other initiatives, that money would be spent on launching a Community Mental Health Navigators program, under which the city would set up outposts in every neighborhood across the five boroughs and in the subways where trained professionals would serve individuals suffering from mental health crises.
Additionally, Mamdani’s plan proposes a 150% increase in funding for the B-HEARD program, which deploys health professionals, like EMTs and paramedics, in response to 911 mental health calls. With such an expansion, there would be at least one B-HEARD team in every neighborhood in the city, according to Mamdani’s team.
Demands for mental health professionals to handle emergency calls related to mental health incidents have mounted since NYPD officers last year shot and killed Win Rozario, a Brooklyn teen, after he summoned police to his home while in distress.
As it relates to emergency dispatch calls, Mamdani’s plan proposes expanding the 988 hotline, which New Yorkers can currently use to request non-NYPD responses during nonemergencies related to mental health. Mamdani’s plan says that hotline should be expanded so nonpolice responses can be requested during emergencies, too.
On homelessness, Mamdani’s plan contains few new policy proposals, but argues his pushes for increased outreach — combined with a “Housing First” policy focus — would help stabilize individuals’ lives and put them on a path to permanent housing.
On gun violence, Mamdani proposes increasing spending by 275% on the city’s Crisis Management System, made up of teams of violence interrupters who aim to prevent shootings before they happen. The plan cites data showing decreases in shootings in areas where such teams are operating.
Ex-city Comptroller Scott Stringer, one of Mamdani’s other fellow candidates in the mayoral race, didn’t blast Mamdani directly, but told reporters outside City Hall on Tuesday afternoon that he believes the NYPD needs more cops.
“I do believe that we need a robust mental health plan, but I also think we need policing. I think it’s not either-or. I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time,” said Stringer while rolling out his own public safety plan calling for 3,000 more cops to be added to the NYPD ranks.
Most of the candidates in the mayoral race have called for hiring more cops. That includes ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’s polling as the front-runner and has vowed to hire 5,000 new NYPD officers if elected.
