NEW YORK, N.Y. — The New York City Council on Friday took up a bill that would create a standalone Department of Community Safety, one of the biggest public safety promises Mayor Zohran Mamdani made on the campaign trail and one he has not yet fully delivered.
Council Member Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn is the lead sponsor. He has said the measure has 34 cosponsors, enough to override a mayoral veto, and that Speaker Julie Menin helped get it onto the hearing calendar.
Restler has laid out three aims for the agency. It would grow the violence interruption work nonprofits do with the city Crisis Management System, pull homeless and mental health services from several agencies into one coordinated effort, and send trained responders to emergency calls around the clock to calm tense situations. He has argued that police are asked to handle too many problems, which pulls them away from violent crime.
Since taking office, Mamdani has set up a smaller Office of Community Safety by executive order. As a candidate he also pledged to scrap the NYPD gang database and disband the Strategic Response Group, and both are still in place.
Community groups used the Public Safety Committee hearing to press for more. Groups that work on school discipline, gang policing and hate violence, among them Dignity in Schools New York, jointly urged a bigger Office of Community Safety and an end to the NYPD Criminal Group Database.
The coalition said the database tags more than 8,000 New Yorkers as suspected gang members and that 99% of them are Black or Latino, citing the city Department of Investigation inspector general. It also asked for a three-to-five-year plan to move police out of schools and for $80 million to place school climate coordinators in 500 schools.
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