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.
POLICE RESEARCH: How 8-, 10- and 12-hour police shifts affect staffing and wellness
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.”
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.
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?
