Key takeaways:
- NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani proposes creating a Department of Community Safety to coordinate prevention and outreach programs.
- Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch expected to remain in place under Mamdani’s administration.
- NYPD staffing levels to stay flat as city moves forward with plans to close Rikers Island.
NEW YORK — With Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a self-described Democratic Socialist, now elected as New York City’s next mayor, one of the biggest questions facing officers is how his leadership will affect the nation’s largest police department.
Once an outspoken critic of the NYPD, the 34-year-old softened his tone during the campaign and pledged to keep Commissioner Jessica Tisch in place. His public safety platform differs from the approach taken under Mayor Eric Adams, proposing changes to how the department coordinates with City Hall.
Here’s what his record and proposals indicate about what’s ahead for the NYPD.
Mamdani says he’ll keep Commissioner Jessica Tisch
Mamdani announced during an October debate that he intended to retain Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. According to CNN, he made the announcement publicly before ever speaking to Tisch directly, telling the network, “I haven’t had a private conversation with her on that.”
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Mamdani expressed confidence she would remain in the role: “I am confident that we will be working together,” he said.
He has publicly credited Tisch with rooting out corruption within the NYPD and overseeing a decline in crime rates, according to CNN.
The Department of Community Safety
A central component of Mamdani’s agenda is the creation of a Department of Community Safety (DCS) — a new civilian agency with a proposed $1.1 billion budget, according to a plan released by his campaign. About $605 million would come from existing programs moved under the department and $455 million would be new funding, generated through efficiencies and reallocated resources.
Mamdani says the department’s mission is to “prevent violence before it happens” by addressing root causes such as poverty, mental illness, housing instability and inequality. The DCS, he says, will take a public health approach to crime prevention, prioritizing “prevention-first, community-based solutions.”
While the new department would absorb many responsibilities currently shared with the NYPD, the plan stresses that police “have a critical role to play.” Mamdani’s proposal contends that officers are too often tasked with handling mental health crises, homelessness and other social issues — work that he says has contributed to 20% longer response times and clearance rate declines.
The DCS would oversee and expand several major initiatives:
- Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division (B-HEARD): Moved under DCS and expanded citywide, with peer counselors on every team, trauma-informed training, and 24/7 service.
- Community Mental Health Navigators: New neighborhood-based outposts connecting residents to care and reducing 911 mental-health calls.
- Transit outreach: Teams of peers, EMTs and mental health professionals stationed in 100 subway stations to engage people experiencing homelessness or crisis, replacing police-led outreach.
- Gun violence prevention: A 275% funding increase for the city’s Crisis Management System, expanding “violence interrupter” and hospital-based programs modeled on Cure Violence.
- Victim and hate-violence services: Expanded funding for Safe Horizon, Family Justice Centers and anti-hate education programs.
The department would also coordinate across city agencies, hosting quarterly safety summits to review progress and share best practices — a “whole-of-government” approach, according to the proposal.
Past criticism of the NYPD
Mamdani’s views on law enforcement have shifted since 2020. After the 2020 killing of George Floyd, he was among the Democrats calling to defund the police, writing on social media that the NYPD was “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”
He also referred to the department as a “rogue agency,” comments that drew sharp criticism from police unions and city officials.
In a later interview with The New York Times, Mamdani said he owed officers an apology. He has since said he no longer supports cutting the NYPD’s budget and promised to maintain current staffing levels.
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A plan to remove police from homeless outreach efforts
Mamdani said he intends to remove NYPD officers from the city’s PATH homeless outreach teams, which currently include police, nurses and outreach workers who remove people with severe mental illness from subway stations. The plan would replace those officers with “transit ambassadors” — civilians trained to assist riders and connect homeless individuals with social services. His campaign states that taking police out of those roles would allow them to focus on serious crime.
Critics, including mental health professionals currently working on the PATH teams, say the plan could be unsafe.
“You can’t do this without police — it’s impossible,” a behavioral nurse told Gothamist. “No one in their right mind would do this alone. You’re going to get hurt.”
The proposal coincides with an NYPD-reported decline in subway crime following the expansion of police patrols. According to the New York Daily News, major crime in the subway system fell 18% during the first three months of 2025 — the lowest level in nearly a decade — and there were no murders in the system during that period for the first time in seven years. Citywide, shootings dropped 23%, the lowest quarterly figure since the CompStat era began in the 1990s, Commissioner Tisch said.
Tisch credited “precision policing” and increased officer presence on trains and platforms for the improvement. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s directive to deploy 750 additional officers on overnight trains also played a role, costing about $154 million in overtime, according to officials.
NYPD staffing
Under the current mayor, Eric Adams, the NYPD announced a plan to raise its headcount to 40,000 officers by 2029, the highest level in two decades. The plan includes $17.8 million this fiscal year and rising to $318.5 million by 2029 to support the hiring of more than 5,000 officers.
Mamdani has said he would keep NYPD staffing flat, noting: “I believe we have the right number of police officers. We have budgeted about 35,000 head count in the NYPD. Eric Adams cannot actually hire enough officers that he actually has the money to do so. And so then now to say that instead of being able to hit his previous mark of 35,000 he’s going to now try and hit 40,000.”
He added: “It’s a question of safety, and that’s exactly what I’m going to deliver.”
Rikers closure
Mamdani supports the law requiring New York City to close Rikers Island and replace it with four borough-based jails. During the final mayoral debate before early voting, Mamdani said he would “do everything in my power to try and meet that deadline” and added, “We have to close Rikers Island. Rikers Island is a stain on the history of this city.”
The plan faces major obstacles. Construction is years behind schedule, and projected costs have doubled — from an original $8 billion to about $16 billion — while Rikers still holds roughly 7,100 detainees, nearly twice the capacity of the four replacement jails combined, the Queens Daily Eagle reported.
A federal judge has warned she may soon strip elements of control over the jail complex from the city and appoint a third-party receiver because of persistent safety and management failures, according to the Queens Daily Eagle.
According to the plan released by his campaign, the Rikers closure is part of a broader housing and mental health strategy. The plan states that incarceration has become the city’s default response to homelessness and mental illness — and that addressing those crises outside of the jail system would make New York safer.
According to the plan, more than 2,500 people held on Rikers each year need supportive housing, which the city has failed to provide. The proposal estimates that it costs $1.4 billion annually to incarcerate those individuals — compared with $108 million to house them, or less than 8% of jail expenses. Mamdani says that expanding supportive housing, paired with sustained treatment and outreach, would “break cycles of homelessness” and reduce reliance on incarceration.
The DCS would direct outreach teams and housing navigators to connect individuals experiencing homelessness or mental health crises to long-term housing options, emphasizing that “communities are safer when everyone has a home.” His plan also commits to freezing rent for rent-stabilized units and expanding rental assistance programs as part of a “housing-first” safety strategy.
Mamdani clarifies past comments on NYPD training with Israel
Mamdani has also faced scrutiny for past remarks linking the NYPD to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
At a 2023 event, he said, “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” When asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper about the comment, Mamdani clarified, “It was a reference to training exercises that have taken place between the NYPD and the IDF.”
Asked whether he still believes the NYPD is “working hand in glove” with the Israeli military, Mamdani replied, “No, what I’ve made very clear is those are training exercises that are of concern to me.”
Next steps
On Jan. 1, Mamdani’s administration is set to begin with an emphasis on prevention-based public safety programs and coordination between police and civilian agencies.
How coordination between the NYPD and new civilian agencies will work in practice has not yet been detailed.
In your view, what are the biggest challenges the NYPD will face under Mamdani’s prevention-first public safety strategy?
Police1 readers respond:
- The NYPD should civilianize as many of the positions currently filled by officers as possible. My agency civilianized many positions, such as traffic accident investigators, missing persons investigators, crime scene investigators, community relations personnel, etc. By the time I retired, we had 800 sworn officers and 600 civilian employees. Not only did the department save money in personnel costs, but the department realized it increased morale across the board.
- This is outrageous. I do agree that police have other jobs to do than deal with mental health, but a lot of these situations involve subjects who are very violent and have weapons. You can’t excuse someone’s violent behavior because they have mental health issues. Sure, send social services and EMTs out on their own, but someone will get hurt and they’ll be calling back for police.
- I like the idea of mental calls for service being taken away from PD response, especially in light of the case in California where an officer/deputy was indicted in an officer-involved shooting of a mental subject, where the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the officer/deputy should not have been sent there in the first place. Reality is the cure for idealism. Idealism can get you killed in law enforcement. Plain and simple — civilians who will be sent to these calls will still want the police with them on these calls, or they will not go.
- Too soon at this point, but I don’t trust him to do the right thing for the officers of NYPD. I hope these programs dealing with mental illness and the homeless work out. This could be a blessing for the officers, but I fear for the safety of these social workers. Time will tell.
- It is a disaster waiting on execution! Politicians and the public always seem to know best what the police should do, without actually asking the police. Mental health programs work, if combined with police. Social workers will not respond to violent scenes. We have a co-responder unit that places clinicians with police. But if a violent crime has been committed, the person still ends up in jail. Mental health professionals can help with people in crisis, but not with crime response. NYPD Officers, RUN!!!
- Prevention-first civilian-based and civilian-managed social programs have been around for a long time. Their purpose is to identify and assist problems involving drug abuse, and mental and physical health issues, as well as homelessness and the actual crime that follows it. Sending civilians into at times violent confrontations with these people is dangerous and they will get hurt. As far as freeing up police officers for more serious crime enforcement is helpful, but only if the criminals will be held accountable, not released from custody without bail if appropriate, and then incarcerated to protect future victims after being found guilty. Many similar programs have not worked because, like they say, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. A large percentage of affected people do not want help, and when we look at those who are criminals by design and nature, it is very doubtful that these crime prevention programs will prevent the inevitable.
- I am a Police Officer with 38 years of service. Some of my toughest calls were with mental health subjects. Taking the police out of that response for mental health and using civilian mental health professionals is going to create a major problem. Now the police will still have to respond after the “Professional Counselor” has been beat up, stabbed, held hostage etc. I can only see this as creating a bigger problem to an already touchy response.
- What qualifications would a preventive outreach agent have to have to allow this to work? If police were there overseeing the encounters, it might work. May as well just add more police trained in both preventive and law-related encounters.
- Trained NYPD officers will leave and emphasis/budget will be shifted away from expanding NYPD and their role. I don’t want to see fewer officers on the subways or have fewer officers deal with emotionally disturbed people. Mamdani is not qualified to make these decisions and I will no longer work/travel to NYC if this occurs. I feel less safe knowing he will be in office.
- My advice to all LEOs in NYC: beat the rush, send out your resumes. There are still plenty of states where your services are wanted and needed.
- The voters get what they asked for & I have no pity. It may look ok short term but w/o law & order and actual consequences, same ole same. Plus the City Gov will cover up & lie about stats (again, same ole same), demonize LE & their actions, continue Leftie Tribalism, rewrite & fail to teach REAL history…it’s a joke & much of what he speaks of is unconstitutional anyway (not that it matters anymore). We are Rome now & it surely doesn’t seem as though the trend will reverse (yes in enlightened…our Constitutional Republic is falling as planned). Ridiculous but not surprising!
- I’m concerned that mental health calls are dangerous and often require physical force and the person in question could very well have a weapon. This puts the mental health professionals and EMS personnel at risk with no real of protecting themselves. I also think a plan of reducing or eliminating overtime is a horrible idea, its tough enough to recruit NYPD as it is. Building new prisons is a waste of money , it would make more sense to revamp and improve Rikers.
- NYC police are the best in the country. They are needed to be a deterrent to crime on the subway and other places. Showing up after a crime has been committed is not a crime protection strategy!
- The biggest challenge to NYPD, any PD for that matter, is to get out from under the politicians. Politicians come and go but policing and law enforcement are the staples. I think Mamdani is keeping the current police commissioner because she will be an extension of his proposed policing policies. President Theodore Rosevelt once said, “Obedience to the law is demanded; not asked as a favor”. Politicians, like Mamdani, cannot be allowed to decide what legislated laws can and cannot be enforced. In the Community Policing model, city hall is a partner, not the driving force. But that is the problem in policing today. President Eisenhour once said, “The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions”. Police departments can no longer be the “scapegoats” for the politicians.
- I guess we’ll have to wait and see if Mamdani’s proposed policy changes actually work... Some of his proposals are very promising if they work as hoped.
- An all out effort to improve the cleanliness of NYC public spaces will help with safety issues, and so will a reduction in homelessness, but the overall safety of everyone in NYC has to be priority one. So I agree with those who express concern about the safety of social workers and others who will be tasked with helping those with mental health issues. This is no time to be Pollyanna about safety concerns. Mamdani will have to show a willingness to adapt and listen (which he has shown) and keep ego in check if it turns out some of his plans are unworkable and should be adjusted. There are a lot of haters out there who will oppose his policies just because they came from his administration, but there are also well informed experts who know better. I applaud his willingness to insist that the city improve things for all and that means starting with those who are doing the worst. Trickle down hasn’t worked so it must be legislated. Ignore the whining. The ultra-rich and largest corporations have made record profits at the expense of our society. Time to pay up and stop using their power to unfair advantage.
- This idea and other proposals are ridiculous. Just more idealistic promises and lies. If there is a domestic dispute (perhaps involving a gun or knife) and a social worker shows up at the door, instead of a police officer, lives will be lost. Shame on NYC voters who believed Mamdani’s proposals. Trouble ahead.
We’ve seen how well these policies have worked in cities like San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. Expanding access to mental health services is important, but responding to individuals in crisis often still requires a law enforcement component.
I’d like to see greater focus on youth intervention programs, education, crime prevention efforts, personal accountability enforced, and making communities safer and more desirable places to live and visit.
Mamdani would benefit from taking some time to observe firsthand — listening to the officers on the ground and spending time with them on their beats — before implementing changes that may be futile efforts. Some things sound great and look good on paper, but when it comes to implementation, they just don’t work.
There’s no substitute for seeing what’s really happening before developing a plan. Look back in history and see what works. Priorities should prioritize the greater good — the safety, stability, and well-being of the community as a whole — rather than continually catering to a small segment of the population who consistently disrupt and endanger the community.
- He made his bed talking trash on the PD prior to winning office. He doesn’t know what kind of people law enforcement officers are. He’s not going to win that back. I’d say if NYPD is at 35,000 now, they’ll be at about 15,000 in six months, and New York will be an absolute mess in a year that not even Batman can save.
- NYPD is lying. There are only 27,000 on the job, and that will go down to a new low of 4,000 due to retirements. This commissioner is a joke — a real bad joke — and will do whatever the new mayor tells her to do.
The city failed to close Rikers Island because of unrealistic construction goals that have far exceeded the city’s budget. We already have borough-wide facilities that can be used in place of Rikers while the city evaluates zoning regulations for new sites.
For example, the Brooklyn Detention Complex (Schermerhorn), the Manhattan Broadway Complex (The Tombs — now closed), and Queens should be divided into three facilities: Long Island (116th Precinct), Astoria, and Forest Hills — while deferring the Bronx to the state in-processing complex that houses short-term stays transferring to long-term care facilities (Ulster Correctional).
- Officers will flee when he tries to implement these soft-on-crime programs. Wait till the first “ambassador “ gets stabbed or shot. A serious rug dance will start.
- I am extremely concerned and disgusted with the mayoral election and I pray for the city.
- If you’re a cop in NYPD, get out now. You will be even more scrutinized when you do your job within the guidelines of the law and department policy. There are lots of Southern States that pay competitively and treat their officers with respect. You don’t have to be treated the way NYPD is.
- It starts with Democratic Socialist. Never in the history of governance has that been a good thing for individual human rights, liberty, freedom. DS is akin to communism, which has only proven success is extraordinary authoritarian privileges for the ruling class and death and starvation for everyone else. History is the teacher that the uninitiated choose to ignore to the peril of everyone. Little to do with policing, much to do with social and societal values. I am afraid that the same people that voted for and support AOC have not experienced enough personal suffering yet. Which is why they voted for and support Mamdani. Good luck New York, as those that you elect do not value or are obedient to the oath of office they swear to uphold.
