NYC Debate Over Public Safety Becomes a Fight About Who Should Handle Mental Health Crises

Last week, a debate took place between the three leading candidates for Mayor of New York City, a city of more than 8 million residents. What was meant to be a discussion about urban safety unexpectedly turned into a conversation about mental health.

The trio on stage was particularly colorful, each carrying his own scandals and controversies. Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist who surprisingly won the Democratic primary, has been accused by many of failing to condemn calls for intifada and of supporting the far left. Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor who lost to Mamdani in the primary, resigned in 2021 after being accused of sexual harassment by 13 women. The third candidate, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican contender, has been arrested 77 times during protests and anti-immigration rallies and has been accused of assaulting migrants.

Despite the scandals, the debate's most surprising moment came when the discussion shifted from traditional issues of policing and public safety to mental health policy. When Mamdani was asked whether he would support the current NYPD Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, known for her tough-on-crime approach, he said yes but with one key condition: the creation of a "Department of Community Safety" with a $1 billion budget.

Mamdani's central argument was that the reason New Yorkers don't feel safe on the subway isn't violent crime, but rather the mental health crisis and the growing number of homeless individuals in the system. According to data he presented, NYPD officers respond to about 200,000 mental-health-related calls every year. Because police spend so much time on these calls, he argued, they don't have enough capacity to address other types of crime.

The New York debate highlighted a global dilemma: who should respond to mental health crises, armed police officers or trained mental health professionals?

The proposal sparked heated disagreement among the other candidates. Sliwa sharply criticized the plan, saying it would not work because in other cities where welfare-response models were tried instead of police, those were smaller towns. New York, he said, is a massive metropolis with thousands of emergency calls, and sending social workers instead of police would put them in danger since they cannot achieve the same results that professional police officers can.

Cuomo's opposition was less intense. He said he supports sending mental health crisis teams alongside police officers to reduce risks to the health workers and ensure quick intervention if a situation turns violent. His main criticism of Mamdani's plan was that it sends non-police teams alone, which he believes would endanger those workers. He added that he had personally seen people with mental illness appear completely calm and then suddenly explode in anger, noting that such reactions can sometimes be symptoms of the illness.

Mamdani's proposal, however, is far from outlandish despite its price tag. It has the backing of many mental health organizations around the world, and in places where similar models have been tested, they have actually saved taxpayer money. Mamdani based his plan on CAHOOTS, a program in Eugene, Oregon, that has been operating since 1989. The program dispatches two-person teams, a crisis worker and a paramedic, to respond to calls involving mental health crises, homelessness, and addiction.

The results are remarkable. CAHOOTS operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and fewer than one percent of its calls require police backup. In its 35 years of operation, there have been no serious injuries or deaths. Mamdani explained in an interview with CBS that the key difference is in the initial instinct: to respond to people with care rather than through law enforcement.

Now officially declared the winner as of November 9, Mayor-elect Mamdani expanded on his vision for the Department of Community Safety. He said his goal is to station mental health teams at 100 subway stations where crises are most frequent. He believes New York can replicate CAHOOTS's success, where 90 percent of calls involving people in mental distress are resolved without police involvement. Mamdani concluded that his goal is to make New York not only safer, but more humane, by sending help instead of handcuffs.