The New York City Council will take a crucial step Friday toward creating a Department of Community Safety as lawmakers hold a hearing on one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign initiatives: reimagining how the city handles violence prevention and responses to mental health emergencies.
While creating such an agency was one of Mamdani’s key campaign promises, it’s one on which he has yet to fully deliver. Political experts who spoke to Gothamist said making good on the pledge is important for the mayor, especially because he’s faced tough criticism of his handling of policing issues.
“This is a promise he made during the campaign and he’s under a lot of pressure from people who identify as progressives to do things with the police department, some of which he hasn’t done,” said Joseph Viteritti, a longtime New York City politics watcher and Hunter College professor.
Mamdani promised an expansive city department that would boost a number of existing programs to curtail violence and address mental health issues in the city. The agency would also allow 911 dispatchers to send non-law enforcement professionals to more emergency and mental health calls, Mamdani said as a candidate.
Strong Council support
Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who represents neighborhoods including Brooklyn Heights, Greenpoint and Williamsburg, is the primary sponsor of a bill up for a hearing Friday that would create the standalone city agency. He said in an interview that he has the support of 34 cosponsors — a veto-proof majority — and that Speaker Julie Menin was helpful and cooperative in scheduling Friday’s hearing.
Restler echoed Mamdani’s campaign pledges when he described his vision of the agency in an interview earlier this week.
“ We ask the NYPD to respond to every issue under the sun,” Restler said, adding that the workload is, “distracting them from preventing and solving violent crime, their core purpose.”
But the department is also a response to a number of incidents where NYPD officers shot and killed people in the midst of mental health crises. That conversation reignited when NYPD officers shot Jabez Chakraborty just weeks after Mamdani took office. Authorities say Chakraborty was experiencing a mental health crisis when he grabbed a large knife and walked toward officers who responded to a 911 call at his Queens home. That followed several incidents in recent years where family members have called 911 for loved ones in distress, only for them to end up getting shot by police. Raul de la Cruz, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, sued the city in 2024 after he was shot during a mental health crisis.
Restler said he wants the department to achieve three things. The first is to expand violence interruption and public safety work done by nonprofit workers who partner with the city’s Crisis Management System.
The second is to coordinate services — such as homeless and mental health services — from multiple city agencies so they can reach New Yorkers who need them.
Lastly, he hopes Department of Community Safety workers can provide real-time responses to emergency calls to deescalate situations on a 24/7 basis.
“It’s a big and ambitious mandate, and we have a lot of conversations to be had with the mayor’s team and the speaker’s team to reach a consensus,” Restler said.
‘Lot of pressure’
As a candidate, Mamdani’s primary focus was affordability, though he did float a number of public safety proposals, most of which he has yet to deliver.
Mamdani said he would have the NYPD scrap its gang database, disband the controversial Strategic Response Group and have officers focus on solving serious crimes.
As of now, the database and the Strategic Response Group are still active and the department has continued its crackdown on minor quality-of-life crimes and violations, which began under previous Mayor Eric Adams.
Mamdani also vowed to create the enormous Department of Community Safety to help free up police officers to focus on serious crimes.
Since taking office, Mamdani has signed an executive order to create the Office of Community Safety, a scaled-down version of the agency that he pitched on the campaign trail.
Viteritti, the Hunter College professor, said the pressure Mamdani faces from progressives to deliver the robust city agency will likely continue because of his campaign pledges.
“This is something [where] his feet are going to be held to the fire,” Viteritti said. “He’s going to have to do something with it.”
Evan Roth Smith, a campaign consultant with Slingshot Strategies, said he expects the agency to focus on issues like homelessness and mental health emergencies.
If it works, Roth Smith said, it could be a big win for Mamdani because those issues may make New Yorkers feel anxious — but they may be hesitant to call the police about them.
“He could go to folks on the left and say, ‘I didn’t just talk the talk, I walked the walk, and I introduced a new way of approaching public safety,’” Roth Smith said.
“And he can go to folks who are not to his left or who may be skeptical of him generally and say, ‘Look, I take seriously issues of homelessness or of emotionally disturbed people or public drug use and so on, and I want our street life to be healthier,’” he added.
Restler said the Department of Community Safety is partly about shifting away from what he called broken windows policing.
“I know the mayor is committed to that vision, and I’m hopeful that the policies of the NYPD will reflect those values in the months to come,” he said.
