Mamdani’s Office of Community Safety wasn’t at his community safety announcement

Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined with Gov. Kathy Hochul, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and other local leaders to celebrate record low crime levels in the Bronx, to tout violence prevention programs and to announce a surge of 200 more cops into the borough. 

“I'm proud to stand here alongside leaders not only across the state, the city, the borough, the district, all of us united,” the mayor said Wednesday morning outside a South Bronx NYPD precinct. 

Notably absent among those united leaders were Mamdani’s new Deputy Mayor for Community Safety Renita Francois and Commissioner of the Office of Community Safety Ayesha Delany-Brumsey. Both recent appointees to Mamdani’s administration are tasked with running the new office, a watered-down version of Mamdani’s campaign plan to launch a Department of Community Safety that would have overhauled the city’s approach to policing by emphasizing civilian response and prevention programs. In reality, the office now has just five full time staff and oversight of a few preexisting programs, including the Office to Prevent Gun Violence and the Office of Community Mental Health. 

The paring down of the Department of Community Safety mirrors the general softening of rhetoric from Mamdani toward police over his short political career. Mamdani’s celebration of the increase in NYPD headcount in the Bronx Wednesday was a huge contrast from his highly critical 2020 statements about police as a candidate for Assembly, when he called to defund the police and argued they caused more harm than good. “Defeating these fascists will be the fight of our lives,” Mamdani posted on X in June 2020, over a video of NYPD officers throwing a Black Lives Matter protester into an unmarked van.  

City Hall declined to explain why the Office of Community Safety wasn’t represented at the Bronx announcement. “The Mayor was glad to attend today’s press conference,” City Hall spokesperson Sam Raskin said in a text, adding that Mamdani would “continue working closely with the Office of Community Safety and participate with a number of events with its leaders.”

It was an NYPD-organized event, held outside a police precinct, to announce a change to policing – which may be an indication we shouldn’t expect any overlap between the police department and the Office of Community Safety. NYPD spokesperson Bradley Weekes wrote in an email that the announcement about the division of the Bronx into two borough patrols “is specific to the operational function of the New York City Police Department.” Weekes also referred City & State to two positive statements the police commissioner has made about the Office of Community Safety.

Still, the mayor namechecked the Office of Community Safety in a press release about the initiative. “I want to thank the men and women of the New York City Police Department and Commissioner Tisch for their partnership and continued hard work to keep New Yorkers safe,” he wrote. “Alongside an Office of Community Safety focused on preventing violence before it happens by connecting New Yorkers to the support they need, we are taking a whole-of-government approach to public safety.”