How Mamdani Proposes to Make New York City Safer

In cities in Oregon, crisis workers answer emergency calls instead of the police. Since 2020, Denver has been sending behavioral health specialists where uniformed officers once would have gone. In Arizona, Tucson runs a 24-hour crisis center.

Now, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and front-runner in New York’s mayoral race, wants to create an agency that would bring mental health responders to all corners of the city.

He has released a 17-page public safety plan proposing a new civilian-led Department of Community Safety that would deploy mental health teams to respond to 911 calls and that would expand street-level programs intended to stop the cycle of violence.

Elle Bisgaard-Church, Mr. Mamdani’s chief adviser, said that the plan would consolidate existing programs and new initiatives under one agency, with the goals of using public health methods to prevent violence and relieving an overstretched police force.

“We can’t actually achieve that through a piecemeal approach,” Ms. Bisgaard-Church said.

Mr. Mamdani’s opponents, Mayor Eric Adams, Curtis Sliwa and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, have said crime is best addressed primarily by having more officers on the beat, and have promised to increase recruiting for the Police Department, which is grappling with attrition. The department has about 34,000 uniformed officers, down from a peak of 40,000 in 2000.

Mr. Mamdani has said that he would keep staffing at current levels. He has said that the agency’s flagging numbers and the forced overtime that results from the drop in head count “reduces the quality of life for officers.”