A pair of fatal shootings by NYPD officers on Thursday brought fresh attention to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to create a new Department of Community Safety which would deploy civilian workers to people having mental health emergencies in place of cops.
Both of the victims killed by police Thursday showed signs they had mental health issues, but NYPD officials said each situation escalated to the point where the officers at each scene used deadly force.
In the first incident, police shot and killed a man who was reportedly wielding a piece of a broken toilet inside Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in Park Slope around 5:30 p.m. Police said he barricaded himself in a room and attempted to harm an elderly patient and a member of the hospital’s security staff. Roughly five hours later in the West Village, police shot and killed a man who pointed a fake gun at them.
“ Last night, officers were placed in incredibly difficult and dangerous circumstances. The actions they took, they responded swiftly,” Mamdani said at an unrelated press event in Brooklyn Friday morning. “I will always emphasize, when someone has been killed, the need for a thorough investigation — as is our current process — and we are going to work to ensure the safety of both officers and New Yorkers at large.”
When asked whether his proposed new department would have sent mental health workers to Thursday’s emergency calls that ended in police shootings, Mamdani said, “Those are hypotheticals we will not engage in at this time.”
But the mayor did say the city requires “an answer to the more than 200,000 mental health calls that the NYPD responds to and receives on an annual basis. And I do continue to believe in the importance of having a mental health unit dedicated specifically to the mental health crisis.”
City Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who drafted legislation last year that would establish Mamdani’s new Department of Community Safety, said the NYPD would still have been part of a response to both of Thursday’s incidents — even if the proposed department also deployed mental health workers to the scenes.
“ We need the NYPD there in real time to de-escalate the situation to the best of their ability and keep people safe … we also need mental health professionals engaging and de-escalating situations wherever appropriate,” Restler said.
He stressed the goal of the Department of Community Safety was to help people struggling with mental illness to connect with treatments, housing and support to live more stable lives, “so both the tragedies that occurred yesterday would never occur in the first place.”
Police-involved deaths are always politically fraught, particularly if there is a perception the mayor is taking a side before an investigation has been conducted.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio — who campaigned on reforming the NYPD and ending the department’s “stop and frisk” policy — faced struggles with the NYPD after many rank-and-file cops said they didn’t support him after the 2014 death of Eric Garner, who was killed when a cop put him in a chokehold.
Months after Garner’s death, two NYPD officers were shot and killed in their patrol car in Brooklyn. When de Blasio gave eulogies at the officers’ funerals, the cops in attendance turned their backs on him.
So far, cops and criminal justice reformers say Mamdani’s comments have struck the right note.
“It is important that the mayor has acknowledged the extraordinary challenges police officers face in these situations, and that he has refrained from speculating or prejudging the incidents while they are under investigation,” Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said in a statement. “That is what New York City police officers need to see from all of our elected leaders.”
Alex Vitale, a professor at Brooklyn College and a member of the community safety subcommittee during the mayor’s transition, agreed that Mamdani is sending the right message.
But he also said the investigations into Thursday’s shootings should hinge less on a determination of whether or not an individual officer is at fault and instead become a tool that helps determine how to prevent shooting incidents from occurring in the first place.
Vitale used the term, “sentinel review process,” which he said is what federal transportation officials use after airplane crashes. He also said nothing about the shootings should undermine Mamdani’s push for a new Department of Community Safety, which would have a civilian team responding to certain mental health calls received by the NYPD.
“ I do continue to believe in the importance of having a mental health unit dedicated specifically to the mental health crisis,” said Mamdani. “I also recognize the difficulty that last night’s situation presented for those officers in their acting swiftly to respond to it.”
