Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the creation of the city’s Office of Community Safety on Thursday and appointed Renita Francois as the first-ever deputy mayor for community safety.
Mamdani said the new agency will offer a variety of responses, including gun violence prevention and mental health.
“Our vision for safety is simple,” said Francois. “Every New Yorker from Highbridge to Stapleton to Bushwick deserves to feel safe and be safe.”
Mamdani said this centralizes several existing agencies because there is a demand for a multi-faceted response.
“If we want to keep New Yorkers safe, we have to also ensure that we are not just asking police officers to respond to every single issue that comes as a result of the fraying of the social safety net,” said Mamdani.
The announcement came one day after NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch testified before the City Council. She said the NYPD received more than 4.3 million 911 calls in 2024 and only 2% of “non-violent mental health calls” would’ve been diverted from the NYPD.
Phil Grimaldi, a retired NYPD detective, told News 12 that mental health calls can be unpredictable.
“The possibility of it turning violent can happen very, very rapidly – and that’s why I think police officers need to be responding to all of these [emotional disturbed person] calls,” he said.
Advocacy groups, like the Legal Aid Society, backed the new agency to provide resources that New Yorkers need.
“We’ve been trying to punish our way through safety in a way that has failed and has really not addressed the full scope of problems that result in people having interactions with the police,” said Phil Desgranges, attorney-in-charge for the criminal law reform at the Legal Aid Society.
City officials did not go into detail about how the new office will respond or how many staff members it will have.