{"id":178357,"date":"2026-03-28T19:25:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T19:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/178357\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T19:25:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T19:25:12","slug":"nyc-mayor-zohran-mamdanis-new-deputy-for-community-safety-helped-run-soros-funded-group-that-backed-abolishing-cops-and-jails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/178357\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new deputy for community safety helped run Soros-funded group that backed abolishing cops and jails"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Mamdani\u2019s new deputy mayor for community safety is an anti-cop radical who previously led a George Soros<\/a>-funded lobbying group that pushed defunding police and abolishing jails, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n

Renita Francois was appointed last week to the $290,000-a-year post<\/a> and will head the socialist mayor\u2019s new \u201cOffice of Community Safety,\u201d\u00a0<\/a>which aims to overhaul how the NYPD responds to 911 calls.<\/p>\n

Francois, 42, spent the past four years working for West Hollywood, Calif.-based Beyond Impact, most recently as its chief program officer. <\/p>\n

\"DeputyRenita Francois, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s new deputy mayor foe community safety, is an anti-cop radical who previously led a George Soros-funded lobbying group that pushed defunding police and abolishing jails. Erik Pendzich\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s pet programs include \u201cDream Defenders,\u201d <\/a>a self-described \u201cblack-led, feminist, socialist, abolitionist, and internationalist political formation fighting for a world without prisons, police, capitalism, and imperialism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another, called \u201cMovement for Black Lives Action,\u201d embraces the \u201cDefund the Police\u201d movement, supports abolishing prisons and providing reparations for slavery descendants, and proclaims its \u201cbold mission\u201d includes bringing about \u201celectoral justice\u201d for Blacks, so they have better representation in government, according to its website.<\/p>\n

Beyond Impact \u2013 which was rebranded in February after previously being named \u201cTides Advocacy\u201d\u2014 and other offshoots of the Tides Network have received more than $51 million over the past decade from Soros\u2019 hard-left grant-making network Open Society Foundation,\u00a0records show.<\/p>\n

More than $35 million went directly to Beyond Impact and was predominately spent backing initiatives\u00a0that tried influencing elections and\u00a0supported so-called criminal-justice reforms, like cashless bail.<\/p>\n

Soros typically tries to keep<\/a>\u00a0a low profile, exerting influence by donating under the radar to lefty candidates \u2014 including former President Joe\u00a0Biden and soft-on crime district attorneys across the United States like Manhattan\u2019s Alvin Bragg\u00a0\u2014 and funneling money to liberal causes and groups.<\/p>\n

Open Society Foundations and related nonprofits he founded have doled out more than $32 billion worldwide since 1984,\u00a0according to its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Francois \u2014 who earned degrees at arch-liberal University of California, Berkeley and Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management \u2014 has no experience in law enforcement, according to her LinkedIn profile.<\/a><\/p>\n

She joined the nonprofit in 2022 after spending the previous seven years working for far-left former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio as a top honcho in the Mayor\u2019s Office of Criminal Justice, and oversaw its neighborhood safety action plan.<\/p>\n

In her new City Hall role, she will oversee an Orwellian-titled office with just one other staffer \u2014 and a $260 million budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her main goal will be figuring how best to shift responsibility for \u201cnonviolent\u201d 911 mental-health-emergency calls from the NYPD to social workers and other civilian responders.<\/p>\n

The new office will also house existing city programs, including ones to combat hate crimes, reduce shootings through violence interrupters, and provide services to sexual assault victims.<\/p>\n

\"NYCFrancois (with Mamdani to her left) was appointed last week to the $290,000-a-year post and will head the socialist mayor\u2019s new \u201cOffice of Community Safety,\u201d\u00a0which aims overhaul how the NYPD responds to 911 calls. Matthew McDermott for NY Post<\/p>\n

Law enforcement experts, however, are questioning whether emergency response times will rise because dispatchers might have to spend extra time deciding whether cops should be sent on calls involving the mentally ill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to predict this, but with my experience I think it\u2019s just going to go very bad quickly if there\u2019s confusion,\u201d said retired NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who served in the NYPD for three decades before retiring in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think [the new office] shows a little bit of naiveness on the part of the mayor here. . . . This administration\u2019s trying to reinvent the wheel,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch raised serious questions about whether the office is even necessary, while testifying under oath last week during a City Council hearing.<\/p>\n

She estimated only about 2% of calls for service would be removed from her department\u2019s jurisdiction and diverted to the new office, citing 2024 figures<\/a> showing nearly 86,000 of the 4.3 million received that year were nonviolent mental health calls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that you need to send the police when there\u2019s a call for a violent person,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Critics say the new office is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars and that Mamdani is vastly understating the number of calls requiring a police response.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis entire agency is just a $260 million boondoggle to fill a campaign promise and find new ways to keep dangerous criminals out of jail,\u201d Council Minority Leader David Carr (R-Staten Island) said. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStart your day with all you need to know\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMorning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that regard, it appears the mayor found the right person for the job: an activist who ran a Soros-funded organization that advocates defunding police and abolishing prisons.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2024, Beyond Impact reported $92.5 million in revenues accumulated predominately through donations, but was still $612,715 in the red, according to its latest available tax filings.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit\u2019s main expenses included $22.4 million for salaries, with Francois pocketing $184,955 in base salary and \u201cother compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group also doled out $16.8 million for \u201cpolitical campaign activity\u201d to boost lefty candidates and causes.<\/p>\n

Key benefactors included the Working Families Party, which got $937,000; Make the Road Action, which received $450,000, and other groups also backed by Soros \u2014 whose get-out-the-vote groundwork played a pivotal role in helping Mamdani upset ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo <\/a>in last year\u2019s Democratic mayoral primary. <\/p>\n

The Mayor\u2019s Office defended the new office, saying it will free up police officers to respond to crimes more quickly and actually improve emergency response times that soared the previous four years<\/a> under former Mayor Eric Adams.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Office of Community Safety will both prevent violence before it happens and ensure that when New Yorkers are in crisis, they receive the right response, at the right time, from the right people,\u201d added Mamdani spokesman Sam Raskin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re building something better: a coordinated, citywide system that sends mental health professionals and civilian responders to nonviolent emergencies, while allowing police to focus on the work they are trained to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francois did not return messages.<\/p>\n

The deputy mayor told NY1 on Wednesday <\/a>she understands it might \u201cbe a little bit scary for some people\u201d to see civilians rather than cops respond to 911 calls, but the administration is committed to the new \u201ccompassionate-first approach.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to lead with fear. We want to lead with hope,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Critics such as Carr aren\u2019t buying the \u201ccompassionate\u201d veneer. <\/p>\n

\u201cNew York City already has an Office of Community Safety \u2014 it\u2019s called the NYPD. Just stay out of the way and let them do their job,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Mamdani\u2019s new deputy mayor for community safety is an anti-cop radical who previously led a George Soros-funded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[13225,7384,5302,13912,2441,57,9,56,63,65,64,103,104,87,4719,72089,58,82],"class_list":["post-178357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-13225","tag-george-soros","tag-jessica-tisch","tag-lobbyists","tag-mental-illness","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-nypd","tag-police","tag-politics","tag-prisons","tag-tides","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178357","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=178357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}