Zohran Mamdani Suggests ‘Mental Health Experts’ Should Respond to Crimes Rather than Police
Socialist candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani wants “mental health experts” to lead the way in responding to certain crises, he seemed to suggest during Wednesday night’s debate.
The questioner asked all of the candidates — Mamdani, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Curtis Sliwa (R) — whether they would ask Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to remain police commissioner.
Mamdani said he would ask him to stay and said his administration would be “relentless in its pursuit of safety and affordability for all New Yorkers.”
“And to do that, we’ll need to build a team of the best and brightest. Eric Adams has stacked the upper echelons of the
NYPD with corruption and incompetence. Commissioner Tisch broke the status quo, started accountability, rooting out corruption and reducing crime in all five boroughs,” he said.
“I have said time and time again that my litmus test for this position will be excellence and alignment will be on this position and I am confident that under a Mamdani administration we will continue to fulfill that same mission,” he said, explaining that they would do so by creating the “Department of Community Safety to ensure that mental health experts are the ones responding to the mental health crisis.”
“Because safety and justice are the cornerstone of our pursuit of public safety and, in doing so, we will also be able to achieve our affordability agenda,” he added.
In the past, Mamdani has expressed opposition to sending police officers to domestic disputes, for example. During an “intercultural conversations” segment on the “Immigrantly” podcast in July 2020, he said:
The police don’t create security…we have so many responsibilities that we have given to the police that, frankly, should have nothing to do with their departments…if someone is wandering, if someone survives, experiences domestic violence – there are so many different situations that would be much better handled by people trained to handle those specific situations, as opposed to an armed person.
During the debate, Republican candidate Sliwa added that he would ask Tisch to stay as well, but predicted that she would not stay with either Mamdani or Cuomo as mayor because “she spoke out against no cash bail.”
“Cuomo, the architect of cashless bail, Zohran, the apprentice of cashless bail. This is why criminals run into the streets,” he said.
Cuomo also said he would ask him to remain police commissioner, but he doubted Mamdani would keep his promise to do so.
“The DSA’s position, its position has been to defund, defund the police. She would not accept that. Her current position, today’s position, was to freeze the budget. That would result in a reduction in police force. She asked for more police. I asked for more police. Mayor Adams called for more police…The DSA calls for the elimination of crime. He wants to decriminalize prostitution,” he said. Cuomo. “I don’t think she would support any of that.”
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The election takes place on November 4, 2025.
