Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran for office on a promise to redesign how New York City responds to 911 calls involving certain mental health crises, vowing to create a Department of Community Safety that would empower civilian clinicians to handle some of the work now done by police officers.
Now Mr. Mamdani is planning to hire a new deputy mayor by this spring to oversee the new department, according to two senior City Hall officials familiar with the plan.
The new hire would work alongside Mr. Mamdani’s first deputy mayor, Dean Fuleihan, whose portfolio includes the Police Department. Together they would determine the scope of the new agency and how to divide responsibility for calls related to behavioral and mental disturbances and homelessness, the officials said. It was unclear what other agencies, if any, would be in the new deputy mayor’s portfolio.
Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist who ran for mayor on a pledge to make New York City more affordable, proposed the department during his campaign last year in concert with Elle Bisgaard-Church, his campaign manager who is now his chief of staff in City Hall.
The new deputy mayor position signals Mr. Mamdani’s shift from his predecessor, Eric Adams, a retired police captain who ran on a law-and-order platform. Mr. Adams named a close ally, Philip Banks III, as deputy mayor for public safety, resurrecting a title that had not been filled since the 1990s.
The deputy mayor for public safety role would presumably be replaced by Mr. Mamdani’s new hire to oversee community safety.
Funding for the department was not included in the mayor’s preliminary budget that was unveiled on Tuesday, but it is expected to be included as the budget process continues into monthslong negotiations with the City Council to secure a deal before July 1, the start of the fiscal year.
In his public safety plan released during his mayoral campaign, Mr. Mamdani vowed to set up the Department of Community Safety with a $1.1 billion budget, relying on about $605 million from existing city programs and another $455 million in new expenses that would stem from “finding government efficiencies and cutting waste,” according to the plan. The agency would coordinate with, but operate independently of, the city’s large and powerful Police Department, dispatching mental health responders for certain emergency calls.
Mr. Mamdani recently reiterated his call to create this agency after the police shooting of Jabez Chakraborty, who was charged on Friday with attempted assault stemming from an encounter in Queens last month, during which he was accused of wielding a kitchen knife at officers. During the encounter, an officer shot and wounded Mr. Chakraborty, 22. The officer had been responding to a 911 call at Mr. Chakraborty’s family home.
Mr. Chakraborty’s relatives have said that they called 911 for medical assistance and that they have asked the Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, not to pursue charges. Mr. Chakraborty has schizophrenia.
Mr. Mamdani, who has met with the family, has said that he does not believe Mr. Chakraborty should be prosecuted.
“Jabez needs mental health treatment, not criminal prosecution by a district attorney,” Mr. Mamdani said this month. “And that is why I proposed creating a Department of Community Safety, to build a mental health system rooted in prevention and sustained care in real crisis response so officers no longer have to handle these situations alone.”
He said the encounter had led him to urge his administration “to speed up this work,” though he has not been able to divulge much detail about how the department will operate.
Many of Mr. Mamdani’s ideological allies in City Council have signed onto a bill to create the department, which was introduced last year and recently reintroduced.
“We ask the N.Y.P.D. to respond to every single issue under the sun,” said Lincoln Restler, a Brooklyn councilman who is sponsoring the legislation, adding that some calls would be better handled by civilians. “The creation of this office would allow the N.Y.P.D. to spend all of their time preventing and solving violent crime, which is their core mission,” Mr. Restler, a Democrat, said.
It is unclear if Mr. Restler’s bill will have support from the City Council speaker, Julie Menin, a moderate Democrat whose leadership quest Mr. Mamdani did not support. In a statement, her spokesman, Jack Lobel, said Ms. Menin would “conduct a review” upon learning more about Mr. Mamdani’s plans for the department.
Should Ms. Menin not support its creation, the mayor could circumvent City Council by setting up the department through other measures; Mr. Restler indicated that he would push for the passage of his legislation to avoid a temporary mayoral office created through executive order.
“I believe that the Council must ultimately act to ensure that the Department of Community Safety is a permanent success in New York City,” he said.
Sally Goldenberg is a Times reporter covering New York City politics and government.
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