New York City Council votes to scale up Office of Community Safety

Another New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaign promise could be closer to becoming reality. Remember the Department of Community Safety?  

As The New York Times reported last April, Mamdani originally envisioned that the department would “focus on expanding violence interrupter programs and mental health teams that respond to 911 calls.” Mamdani initially proposed setting aside $1 billion a year for the agency. 

But that grand vision has not been fully implemented. In March, Mamdani signed an executive order to establish the Office of Community Safety (OCS) as a “first step” toward creating a Department of Community Safety. The OCS “develops citywide community safety strategies” and serves as an umbrella for other city offices, including the Office of Neighborhood Safety and the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes. Far from the billion-dollar price tag for a full-fledged department, the city’s FY 2027 budget sets aside $40 million for the OCS. 

But some New York City councilmembers want a larger-scale “community safety” operation as Mamdani had originally envisioned. On Friday, city council members held a hearing on a bill to establish a Department of Community Safety. According to Gothamist, the bill’s primary sponsor, Councilmember Lincoln Restler, has said that he has the support of 34 co-sponsors, enough for a veto-proof majority. Restler wants the department to coordinate homeless and mental health services, de-escalate emergency situations, and “expand violence interruption and public safety work done by nonprofit workers,” reported the outlet. 

Just as New York City may be scaling up its community safety apparatus, another city voted to dismantle its community safety office this week. On Thursday, the Minneapolis City Council voted to eliminate the city’s Office of Community Safety, which was created in 2022. 

According to KSTP 5, councilmembers argued that “the agency had not delivered results worth the cost,” and some “said the office did not improve oversight of the Minneapolis Police Department.”

A Minneapolis City audit from this year also found that the city’s Neighborhood Safety Department (which is part of the city’s OCS) failed to “properly oversee its contracts,” reported FOX 9.  And according to an investigation by the outlet, one “prevention consultant billed over $270,000 for personnel, rent, and food, yet the city never produced a single receipt for the company.” 

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey opposed shuttering the office. He told MPR News that “those who are bringing this proposal both don’t understand what it takes to run safety departments for a major city, nor do they have any plan for how these essential services should be delivered under their own proposal.”

As MPR News noted, New York City’s Office of Community Safety is different from Minneapolis’s model. In Minneapolis, the office oversees the police, 911 emergency responders, and the fire department, along with neighborhood safety groups. In New York, the office does not oversee the police, 911 emergency services, or the fire department. Still, Frey tried to defend the Minneapolis Office of Community Safety by claiming its model has been “nationally recognized” in places like New York, reported MPR News. 

New York City’s Office of Community Safety is still relatively new, and it may be difficult to judge its effectiveness. It’s fair to question whether the answer to enhancing safety is more bureaucracy and government-supported nonprofits. If New York is to sink more taxpayer funding into turning the office into a department, it would be wise to study Minneapolis’s apparent mismanagement and mistakes.