Policing in New York City has always been about more than fighting crime. Over the course of a nearly 20-year NYPD career, I responded to countless calls that had little to do with criminal activity. The most common involved people in crisis, neighbors worried about a loved one, or individuals whose primary need was medical or mental health care.
Like any officer, I did my best in those moments. After all, who else were people supposed to call? Still, the limits of the job were clear. The standard police toolkit—a badge, gun, and handcuffs—was often poorly suited to these situations, and at times could make them worse.
That’s why the newly created Department of Community Safety, tasked in part with handling mental health response, deserves a fair hearing. The move recognizes that while police play an important role in upholding public safety, it is not law enforcement’s responsibility alone, but instead the product of a network of services tailored to different situations.
Among those services is B-HEARD, New York City’s community responder program, now under the Department of Community Safety’s purview. Since 2021, B-HEARD has sent teams of health professionals to low-risk mental health 911 calls previously handled by police. The mayor’s office has said it is intent on increasing the number of calls diverted to B-HEARD, and data from other community responder programs shows why this should be a critical priority for both police and the broader public.
Nationwide, more than 90 community responder programs now handle roughly 230,000 911 calls each year, according to Law Enforcement Action Partnership. These teams of trained specialists respond to behavioral health crises and other low-level calls, focusing on de-escalation and connecting people to services. They operate safely—with no reported fatalities or serious injuries—and often produce better outcomes, while reducing legal liability risks for cities. Studies have shown the programs can reduce police contact, arrests, and low-level criminal offenses, freeing up police to focus on the serious threats we are trained to address.
The hard work lies ahead in New York City, but I am cautiously optimistic that the Department of Community Safety will position us to build a public system capable of better meeting the city’s needs. Still, the effort has drawn criticism from all sides, with some calling it too extreme and others not nearly ambitious enough. Skeptics have expressed concern about moving crisis response away from police, while advocates for non-police models argue the plan is underwhelming. Ironically, even some longtime critics of alternatives to policing have called it out for being “worlds away from the radical change [Mayor Zohran] Mamdani promised.”
Taken together, these critiques say less about the plan’s flaws than about the difficulty of threading the needle on a complex public safety issue. If anything, the fact that it is drawing fire from all sides points to a pragmatic approach meant to account for very real political and operational challenges. While this plan may not qualify as “radical,” my law enforcement experience tells me that this is an asset, not a liability. Though I support taking certain low-level service calls off of law enforcement’s plate, I also recognize the necessity of an armed police response for some situations—look no further than the recent machete attack on the subway, for example.
A plan that allows for strategic implementation and sustainable growth of alternative response is ultimately the smartest path forward. The successes of the community responder model did not materialize overnight. They were built carefully, with attention to training, staffing, dispatch protocols, and scale. It’s not hard to see why these details are so important. Sending unarmed responders into sensitive, unpredictable situations requires clear guidelines about when they are deployed and how they are supported. It requires trust between agencies and from the public. A deliberate expansion allows for course correction, data collection, and the kind of institutional learning that ensures programs can operate smoothly while managing risks.
Despite the competing critiques over whether the plan goes too far or not far enough, there is likely some agreement on the underlying concerns. Any public safety response service must be safe, effective, and accountable to the public. Creating a dedicated department to guide the community responder model is an important first step toward pursuing a measured, evidence-driven approach to addressing the clear gaps in the current system.
One of the Department of Community Safety’s central challenges will be increasing the share of 911 calls routed to B-HEARD, which has a relatively narrow focus on mental health response and operates within limited geographic areas and hours. Meeting that challenge will likely require a mix of strategies: expanding service coverage and operating times, rethinking staffing models, improving dispatch protocols, and gradually taking on a broader range of low-level calls—from homelessness outreach to quality-of-life and service connection needs. Other cities, such as Albuquerque and Durham, North Carolina, have successfully managed this expansion under newly created community safety departments.
In my years in the NYPD, I saw firsthand how often officers were required to handle calls better suited for community responders. Though I recently retired, I still regularly speak with officers who are spread too thin and would eagerly embrace the right kind of help. With the creation of the Department of Community Safety, I’m hopeful that New York City will be better positioned to build on the successes of community responder programs in other jurisdictions, which would translate to better outcomes for both police and the public we serve.
That’s the promise of this plan. Not an overnight transformation, but a steady shift toward a smarter, more strategic public safety system. If done correctly, it will be in no small part due to an expansion process that prioritized thoughtful planning and strategy. And in a city as complex as New York, that’s exactly the approach we should want.