\u201cAt the core of both the campaign commitment and today’s announcement is a north star on delivering safety to each and every New Yorker, and on, finally, treating the mental health crisis with the seriousness and the specialization that it deserves,\u201d Mamdani said.<\/p>\n
Mamdani added that the new office would help bolster some of the city\u2019s existing programs, like B-HEARD, which the mayor said had \u201clong been kneecapped,\u201d \u201cunderfunded,\u201d and \u201cunder-supported.\u201d<\/p>\n
The office will be run by Francois, who previously served as executive director of the Mayor\u2019s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety within the Office of Criminal Justice under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will invest in the resources to ensure well-coordinated responses rooted in dignity and care, centered in community and informed by the experiences of those closest to the solutions,\u201d Francois said on Thursday. <\/p>\n
The office will be split into three divisions; the Division of Neighborhood Safety, which will focus on violence prevention and victim support; the Division of Community Mental Health, which will focus on crisis response; and the Division of Strategic Initiatives, which Mamdani described as a \u201cplace for innovation, where we pilot new public health-based approaches to violence prevention.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s pitch to change the way the city addresses public safety and responds to mental health crises is not a new idea, but one that came to the forefront of his progressive campaign for mayor last year. <\/p>\n
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who has pushed for community safety and policing reforms dating back to his time representing Brooklyn in the City Council, applauded Mamdani\u2019s announcement as a key first step, but acknowledged that the bigger steps are the ones to come. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of questions to be answered, but you can’t do a thing unless you start,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is really important that we begin so that we can get to a place where all of those questions will be answered.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot overhaul public safety overnight, because we didn’t get here overnight, and to try to do that would threaten both success and safety,\u201d he added. \u201cNor can we continue to do what has already been done and failed by our communities for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s announcement and executive order came before a raucous crowd of advocates and supporters, who also celebrated the plan. <\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s announcement is a vital step towards making New York City safer by investing in caring, empirically driven solutions that support strong neighborhoods rather than the failed practice of relying on police to respond to every societal ill,\u201d said Queens Councilmember Tiffany Cab\u00e1n. \u201cOur communities have long known the true sources of safety \u2014 addressing poverty, mental health, substance use, and getting to the root causes of conflict and violence before they escalate.\u201d <\/p>\n
Organizations like the Legal Aid Society and the New York City Civil Liberties Union said they are eager to work with the new office.<\/p>\n
In a statement, NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman cited Chakraborty and Win Rozario, who, unlike Chakraborty, was fatally shot by police during a mental health crisis, as prime reasons for why a change in the city\u2019s response to mental illness is necessary. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen the dangers of police responses to mental health crises too many times, most recently in the cases of Win Rozario and Jabez Chakraborty,\u201d she said. \u201cThe success of any new approach will require being clear-eyed about the failures of existing responses, as well as deep engagement with communities and experts to develop its replacement.\u201d<\/p>\n
But not all were behind the new plan, including the former leader of the City Council\u2019s Republican party. <\/p>\n
“This is really not the right time for the administration to be creating a new office, and especially not one with a budget of over a quarter billion dollars, regardless of whether it is ‘new money’ or money being diverted from elsewhere” said Queens Republican Councilmember Joann Ariola. “Not just that, but the mayor is looking to take an end around to get this passed without having to go through the Council by making this an office instead of a department, and that does not sit well with me at all.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAt the core of both the campaign commitment and today’s announcement is a north star on delivering safety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-169399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}