NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani: We Need a Department of Community Safety that Would Focus on the Mental Health Crisis

EXCERPT:

MAMDANI: “When I speak to those officers on the beat, I hear a frustration from them that we're asking them to do more than just focus on serious crimes, we're asking them to do the work of mental health professionals and social workers. And that reliance on having them deal with almost every failure of the social safety net is making it impossible for them to tackle those crimes. And so that's why we have put forward a proposal to create a Department of Community Safety that would focus on the mental health crisis, that would focus on gun violence, hate crimes, and ensure that we allow police to do their jobs and we hire mental health professionals to do the work that they are best suited to do.”