A top City Council politician warned that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision not to add 5,000 cops to the ranks of the NYPD could make New Yorkers less safe.
Oswald Feliz (D-Bronx), who chairs the council’s Committee on Public Safety, said Mamdani’s hiring freeze comes as the department is “already facing unprecedented officer shortages.”
“This is not good,” he told The Post on Sunday. “Cutting police hiring will exacerbate problems related to excessive overtime, slow response times and crime.”
Mamdani’s preliminary budget last week reversed a plan by his predecessor, Eric Adams, to add thousands of officers to boost the NYPD’s staffing levels to highs not seen in decades.
Adams’ proposal would have increased the headcount to 40,000 strong — but Mamdani’s administration plans to keep the headcount at 35,000, sticking to his campaign promise to freeze hiring above that level.
Mamdani has vowed instead to create an entirely new department to handle all mental health calls as a way to free up law enforcement officers for more crime-fighting.
But Hizzoner has offered up little tangible info about how the so-called Department of Community Safety would actually function as questions swirl about its rollout — and funding.
Mamdani’s massive $127 billion budget didn’t offer funding for the agency, which he said would cost $1 billion.
“Public safety must continue to be a top priority,” Feliz said.
“NYC has made progress on the issue of public safety, including record-low shootings, and we must work to preserve that progress,” he said. “Moving forward with the hiring of new officers will ensure police precincts have the tools to decrease crime and resolve complex challenges related to the safety of New Yorkers.”
That concern was echoed by Council Speaker Julie Menin (D-Manhattan) in a Fox 5 appearance where she said city lawmakers were keeping a close eye on crime numbers.
“We do want to make sure that the NYPD has the proper resources,” Menin said. “We’ve got the same number of officers basically that we had on 9/11, yet the city has grown substantially.”
It’s one of the few issues that has bipartisan support.
Councilman Frank Morano (R-Staten Island) also said halting the addition of more cops was the “wrong decision at the wrong time.”
“When you weaken your police force, everything else suffers,” he said.
The NYPD had nearly 38,000 in its ranks in 2019, but that number quickly fell off over the next few years as droves of cops put in their retirement papers and the city struggled to recruit during a wave of anti-cop sentiment.
A Mamdani administration spokesperson didn’t comment specifically on the warnings about NYPD staffing but instead referred The Post to the mayor’s comments at a press conference from Thursday.
“We’ve seen an issue with retention in our department over the last few years, and I have said time and again that for too long, the city has added additional responsibilities onto the NYPD,” Mamdani said.
“We see, at this point, the NYPD responsible for responding to about 200,000 mental health calls a year, and part of our vision in establish a Department of Community Safety is to start to take that responsibility of mental health crises and task mental health responders with that work, and to ensure that police can focus on the work that they signed up to focus on, which is tackling violent crime across the city.”
