Just over a week into Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tenure, city lawmakers are poised to take the first steps in implementing his dramatic plan to revamp how the city responds to mental health emergencies.
Mamdani has vowed to outsource many 911 calls, which are typically handled by the NYPD, to employees of a yet-to-be created Department of Community Safety.
The plan was a central part of his campaign agenda. He outlined it in a 17-page public safety memo on the campaign trail last year, arguing that it would allow clinicians to deal with mental health emergencies while freeing up police officers to focus on more serious crimes. Critics have said it could put unarmed workers at risk and questioned if it would significantly reduce the workload for NYPD officers.
Dora Pekec, a spokesperson for Mamdani, said the mayor is hopeful the council bill will pass, and “will pursue every legal avenue” to create the new department.
The first step toward creating the agency will likely be in the City Council. Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who represents Williamsburg and other North Brooklyn neighborhoods, said he plans to move forward this month with a bill that would create the department. Restler and more than two dozen other lawmakers initially introduced the bill in December, but he said he’ll have to do so again because a new Council has been sworn in.
From there, the Council will likely call a hearing to hear testimony from experts, everyday New Yorkers and others about their view of the legislation, Restler said. Soon after, he hopes to bring it up for a vote before the entire Council, he said.
“I’m optimistic that we’ll have even more support in this new City Council to move the bill forward,” he said.
How will it work?
The current version of the three-page bill establishes a Department of Community Safety and allows the mayor to appoint a commissioner to lead the agency.
The bill calls for the department to maintain at least one office in each borough and assigns the department numerous functions that are generally in line with the public safety vision described by Mamdani’s campaign.
Department staff will respond to some emergency calls in coordination with law enforcement and medical services, according to the bill.
Workers will also be responsible for conflict mediation and safety patrols in certain areas in an effort to prevent violence and “advance a sense of security,” the bill states.
The department will also manage contracts of vendors that work with the city to provide alternatives to incarceration, re-entry services for people who have served time in prison and pre-trial supervised release.
A possible drop in NYPD overtime
Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College sociology professor who served on Mamdani’s transition team, said he does not expect drastic changes at the NYPD in the short term.
But he added that reducing the number of emergency calls that officers respond to could lead to less overtime for the NYPD.
“My biggest short-term hope is that we’ll see a significant reduction in overtime spending,” Vitale said. “That’s the most immediate concrete change that I’m hoping for.”
Over time, Vitale said police officers could still be investigating homicides and shootings, but much of the work to prevent shootings could fall to community groups, not the NYPD.
“That means reducing proactive, suppression policing in favor of allowing the community to do proactive and preventative work,” he said.