Mayor Mamdani on Tuesday announced the expansion of a gun violence prevention initiative — an effort that’s been shown to drive down shootings over time — into Harlem, Washington Heights and Bushwick.
The mayor’s approach to public safety has recently been subject of much scrutiny, with frustration mounting around his lack of action on some of the public safety priorities he campaigned on. After the shooting of a Bronx man by federal immigration authorities, calls intensified for Mamdani to dump his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch.
The expansion of the program, called the Crisis Management System, was “a step,” the mayor said Tuesday, toward following through on his pledge to boost preventative public safety approaches.
“It is not hyperbole to say that the consequences of this are life and death,” he said at a Brooklyn press conference announcing the expansion. “And I’m frankly tired of seeing so many of the same elected officials that I am with today at shooting responses, at vigils. I’m tired, because how many more people will we have to mourn before we start to tackle the systemic nature of this?”
Mamdani had previously indicated he would expand the program when he launched the Office of Community Safety in March.
The CMS, established under former Mayor de Blasio, is a network of violence interrupter and outreach worker teams that work to de-escalate conflict and support residents after shootings, as well as connect New Yorkers to jobs and mental health services. Each of the three additional neighborhoods now added to the program will be allocated $1.6 million for the new programming, for a total new investment of $4.8 million.
Community violence intervention programs have reduced gun violence across the five boroughs by an estimated 21% on average, Mamdani said at the press conference, adding that the introduction of the CMS correlated with big drops in gun injuries and shooting victims in East New York and the South Bronx.
“That translates to 1,567 fewer shootings citywide between 2012 and 2024,” he said, “1,567 New Yorkers with futures ahead of them, who will celebrate another birthday and who fill our city with life every single day. This is critical, life-saving work, and we are committed to deepening and expanding our investments in the preventative approaches that all of you need.”
The city will work with nonprofit organizations The Wick Against Violence, Living Redemption and Grow Up Grow Out Jr. to do outreach and repair efforts.
The programming operates under the umbrella of the Office of Community Safety, which the administration launched as a pared-down, preliminary step toward building a city department of the same name.
Alex Vitale, a public safety expert and sociology professor at Brooklyn College, applauded the program’s expansion, saying it “signals the administration’s commitment to building out the Office, and hopefully Department, of Community Safety.”
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who helped first establish the program more than 10 years ago, emphasized the importance of non-police public safety approaches, but told New Yorkers those solutions wouldn’t come quickly.
“We’re asking New Yorkers to walk with us on this journey,” Williams said, “because changing the way we’ve done public safety is not going to take one day. It’s not going to take one week. It’s not going to take a month. It’s going to take time.”
The news of the initiative’s expansion also comes a day after Mamdani announced a slate of new appointees to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent police oversight body — booting members including Pat Smith, an ex-journalist who had the support of the Police Benevolent Association, the city’s main police union.