70 Organizations Deliver Letter to Mayor Mamdani: Reject NYPD Expansion, Invest in Care

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, June 25, 2026

70 Organizations Deliver Letter to Mayor Mamdani: Reject NYPD Expansion, Invest in Care

Days before budget deadline, groups, electeds, and community members urge Mayor to deliver on his campaign promises & public safety vision 

New York, NY – In a show of widespread, unified opposition to the direction of the Mamdani administration's public safety policy, 70 organizations delivered a letter to the mayor today, urging his him to reverse his proposed NYPD headcount increase and end broken windows policing in favor of investments in housing, healthcare, and other social services. 

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, State Senator Julia Salazar, Council Member Alexa Avilés, Council Member Tiffany Cabán, Council Member Shahana Hanif, and community members joined many of the organizations outside City Hall less than a week before the City budget deadline, to call on Mayor Mamdani to align his budget with the promises he campaigned on by rejecting police expansion and instead investing in the services New Yorkers need. 

“Mayor Mamdani, New Yorkers elected you because they believed in your vision for a New York City in which we can all thrive, including the most marginalized New Yorkers who are suffering in public and have been met by past administrations with brutality, arrests and tickets,” reads the letter. “This vision must include an approach to public safety that is rooted in care, not criminalization. Accommodating a Police Commissioner and NYPD doubling down on broken windows policing, proposing to grow the force, and staying silent in the face of documented abuses — is contradictory to that vision, a failed approach, and waste of resources that could be transformative if invested in communities.”

In the letter, the 70 organizations call on the Mamdani administration to remove the proposed 580 new NYPD officers from the FY27 budget and end Q-Team response to 311 calls, homeless encampment sweeps, and unnecessary arrests for low-level offenses. 

“New York City does not have a police staffing shortage,” the letter states. “It has a resource allocation problem — too many resources flowing to criminalization and too few flowing to care.” The letter calls for funding to be re-allocated to “care, preventative, and community-based support, including Intensive Mobile Treatment (IMT) teams, crisis stabilization and respite centers, community-based behavioral health services, low-barrier housing, school restorative justice programs, non-police violence prevention, and expansion of the social services workforce.”

Quotes

“I supported our Mayor when he ran for office and I believe in our shared vision of a New York City that is truly for all of us,” said Neil Berry of VOCAL-NY. “One of the things he said was that the police are doing too many things that social workers and mental health workers should be doing. So why are we spending more money on the police, instead of investing in mental health or social workers? Let’s take the police out of mental health response, out of homeless sweeps and invest in the City agencies and organisations that can actually address the issues that New Yorkers are facing.” 

“More officers interacting with community members doesn’t equal more safety, just more opportunities for harm, and more families being ripped apart – and we know Black and Latine New Yorkers will bear the brunt of it,” said Samy Feliz, Organizer at Justice Committee and brother of Allan Feliz, who was killed by NYPD in 2019. “Mayor Mamdani: You pledged to keep the NYPD headcount flat, to get the NYPD out of mental health response, and to end sweeps of homeless encampments. You even stood with my family and called for Lt. Jonathan Rivera to be fired. Why haven’t you delivered on any of it?” 

"Mayor Mamdani promised a different approach to community safety, that ends the ineffective and harmful reliance on police to address social and economic needs,” said Darren Mack, Co-Director of Freedom Agenda. “There are so many New Yorkers excited to work with him to make that vision a reality, and we want to see that vision reflected in his budget. Unfortunately, what we're seeing right now indicates that the mayor is planning to intensify the NYPD crackdown on poor and working-class New Yorkers that started under Eric Adams. Our City does not need 580 more cops to arrest more people who can't afford a home or a subway ride. We need that money invested in healthcare, housing, and meeting people's basic needs." 

"Public safety requires far greater investments in meeting our basic needs, from housing and health care to childcare and schools,” said State Senator Julia Salazar (Brooklyn/Queens), Chair of the Senate Committee on Crime Victims, Crime, and Correction. “Adding 580 more police officers to the NYPD's already swollen ranks not only is a misallocation of resources, but also deepens all-too-familiar cycles of over-policing, criminalization, incarceration, violence, and trauma. Mayor Mamdani won his historic election on a campaign platform that centered on caring for New Yorkers in need instead of ensnaring them in the criminal legal system, and I implore him to follow through. That means not inflating the police headcount, but instead acting to end the NYPD's aggressive and discriminatory enforcement of low-level offenses. It means finally disbanding the Strategic Resource Group, dismantling the discriminatory Gang Database, empowering the Department of Community Safety, and expanding alternatives to incarceration."

“Access to housing and mental health care are key to delivering safer, healthier communities,” said Council Member Tiffany Cabán. “The current budget proposal does not expand City FHEPS, a program critical to getting New Yorkers out of shelter and into permanent housing. It also fails to expand the resources of mobile treatment teams, leaving hundreds of New Yorkers in need of mental healthcare stuck on waiting lists for that care. Instead, it proposes throwing millions more dollars into reactive and failed policies of policing and punishment by adding 580 officers to an already bloated NYPD budget. We deserve better and we demand better.”

"New Yorkers voted for a different vision of public safety — one rooted in dignity, care, and investment in communities, not a continuation of the failed policies of broken windows policing and criminalization," said Tina Luongo, Chief Attorney of the Criminal Defense Practice at The Legal Aid Society. "Expanding the police force while continuing arrests for low-level offenses will not make our city safer. It will only deepen the harms that Black and brown communities, immigrants, unhoused New Yorkers, and people with unmet mental health and substance use needs have endured for decades. Mayor Mamdani has an opportunity to chart a new course by investing in housing, healthcare, and community-based services that address the root causes of instability. Public safety is not built through punishment. It is built through care, opportunity, and ensuring every New Yorker has what they need to thrive."

“The NYPD’s use of so-called ‘quality of life’ policing, overreliance on custodial arrests, and a lack of police accountability has subjected New Yorkers to increased police interactions and contributed to a crisis in New York City courthouses," said Yung-Mi Lee, Legal Director of Criminal Defense at Brooklyn Defender Services. “To truly make our neighborhoods safe, New York City must prioritize its investments in community support and care, not in policing and the criminalization of poverty.”

“New Kings Democrats values a public safety model, beyond policing, based on respect for and holistic investment in communities,” said New Kings Democrats. “Adding hundreds of new officers and surging quality of life/broken windows policies is contrary to these values and contrary to what New Yorkers voted for when they elected Mayor Mamdani last year. NKD joins the Justice Committee in urging the mayor to put an end to discriminatory policing practices and to embrace a more inclusive, democratic approach to community safety.” 

“The NYPD’s use of so-called ‘quality of life’ policing, overreliance on custodial arrests, and a lack of police accountability has subjected New Yorkers to increased police interactions and contributed to a crisis in New York City courthouses," said Yung-Mi Lee, Legal Director of Criminal Defense at Brooklyn Defender Services. “To truly make our neighborhoods safe, New York City must prioritize its investments in community support and care, not in policing and the criminalization of poverty.”

"On the campaign trail, Mayor Mamdani made commitments to end the ‘jail-first’ approach to public safety that harmed Black, brown, and low-income communities under the Adams administration,” said Yonah Zeitz, advocacy director at the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. “While the new administration has made important strides in the first six months, this executive budget continues the status quo of excessively funding the NYPD and the DOC at the expense of essential services that New Yorkers rely on. We demand a budget for New Yorkers that will reduce the number of cops, cut the jail population, shut down Rikers, and invest in real community safety such as housing, health care, including mental health care, education, and jobs.”

“Mayor Mamdani rightly campaigned on a transformative vision of public safety that invests in basic human needs rather than over-policing and mass surveillance,” said Michael Sisitzky, Assistant Director of Policy at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It is still early in the administration and the Mayor still has time to deliver on that vision. But there have also been worrying signs the administration is backing away from key promises, from expanding the NYPD headcount and continuing the NYPD's gang database and Strategic Response Group, to continuing to include police in mental health crisis response. We urge the administration to preserve the Mayor’s vision and to advance true public safety."

"Mayor Mamdani promised New Yorkers he would not expand the NYPD, and he needs to keep that promise," said Council Member Shahana Hanif. "Spending hundreds of millions on police expansion won't solve our housing crisis, address unmet mental health needs, or help families stay in their homes. If we're serious about keeping New Yorkers safe, we should invest in housing, care, and community—not more policing. New Yorkers deserve a budget that puts care, not cops, at the center of public safety."