Police should be removed from mental health crises in the subway system, not the people with untreated mental illness, mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani said in a new policy proposal.
Mamdani, a third-term Assemblyman and the progressive Democratic frontrunner in the brewing race for City Hall, released a public safety platform on Tuesday that calls for police to be taken out of mental health responses, setting him apart from the Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul and much of the crowded field of candidates jockeying for a bite at Adams’ would-be second term.
Under Mamdani’s plan, the city would stand up a new agency, to be known as the Department of Community Safety, which would take over several functions currently housed within or co-led by the NYPD. Those responsibilities include responding to emergency mental health calls, operating so-called co-response teams – police paired with nurses and outreach workers – to conduct street outreach and patrol the transit system for people who may be experiencing a psychiatric crisis.
The plan, which also touches on driving down homelessness, gun violence and hate crimes, calls for more funding for preventative care, peer-based voluntary programs and more points of access for youth seeking city mental health services. It includes roving licensed mental health workers known as “community mental health navigators” to help connect people in crisis to services, more mobile outreach teams and an expansion of the B-HEARD program, which deploys health professionals to non-criminal mental health 911 calls. The new agency would have a $1.1 billion budget, including $605 million from existing services and $455 million of new funding, according to the Mamdani campaign.
Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, said the program was necessary to both reach the New Yorkers most in need of treatment and let police focus on law enforcement rather than issues that could be solved by social services.
“Police have a critical role to play, but right now we are relying on them to deal with the failures of the social safety net, a reliance that is preventing them from doing their actual jobs,” Mamdani said at a press conference outside the municipal building on Tuesday. “This is part of the reason why so many crimes are left unresolved in our city.”
The use of police to take people who may have an untreated mental illness from public spaces to hospitals has been the subject of perennial debate. The practice moved into the spotlight during Adams’ and Hochul’s first terms, when the executives made so-called involuntary removals a central component of their subway safety plans. In 2024, police and outreach workers removed more than 7,700 people, mostly from private residences, more than 7,000 of which were initiated by police, according to a report released by the city in January.
Both officials have consistently ramped up efforts to increase removals, flooding the subways with police and National Guard soldiers and aggressively pushing changes to state law that would make it easier for police to take individuals to the hospital against their will. The issue of public safety and the visibility of homeless people who have fallen through the social safety net has been a top issue in recent city and state elections and has become a focus of the Trump administration, which has threatened to withhold funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority over perceived disorder in the transit system.
Other mayoral frontrunners appear to have come in line with that thinking, along with Democratic members of the state Legislature who have introduced legislation to expand the power of clinicians in seeking long-term commitment and of police in removing people who appear unable to meet basic life needs. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo released his own safety plan shortly after declaring his candidacy for mayor, which called for more robust police responses but fell short of endorsing changes to state law. City Comptroller Brad Lander, a longtime staple in progressive circles, has also embraced the concept of involuntary removals, saying they needed to be ramped up in a plan focused on connecting homeless people to housing.
Hochul has been pushing for expanded powers to remove and commit people in the state budget, which is being negotiated with legislative leaders in Albany. The issue has emerged as one of the key sticking points in budget talks, which blew the April 1 start of the fiscal year this week. Neither the state Senate’s nor the Assembly’s own budget proposals included changes to the statute setting the stage for a battle in the final stretch of negotiations.
