I’ve been following Mamdani’s proposal closely, especially the part about shifting a portion of 911 calls from the NYPD to a new “Department of Community Safety.” The idea isn’t new. Oregon HAD a similar model for about thirty years through the CAHOOTS program. The program ended in April 2025. The crisis-response teams handle about 17% of all emergency calls, they needed police backup in about 2% of cases, and the city supposedly saved millions each year by sending the right responders to the right situations. News articles (https://www.opb.org/article/2025/04/08/cahoots-service-ending-in-eugene-effective-immediately/) about the program do not specifically state why they cancelled the program, but did say they didn't have the funding to continue it. I’d like to see what the critics say as well, and what concerns didn't show up in the public talking points. Misclassified calls, responder safety, gaps in service, and scalability issues are all things we should be watching for as NYC explores a similar direction.
NYC has been trying its own version through B-HEARD (https://mentalhealth.cityofnewyork.us/bheard-data). The early data shows potential. They’ve handled tens of thousands of mental-health calls, and almost half of the people assessed were able to remain in the community instead of being sent to emergency rooms. Feedback has been positive, and the idea of letting NYPD focus on serious crime rather than mental-health crises makes sense on paper. But if it worked so well in Oregon, why did they cancel it??? Also, what works in Eugene, Oregon doesn’t automatically translate to a city of more than eight million people, and B-HEARD has already run into problems with limited hours, staffing shortages, and uneven execution.
Where this gets complicated for lawful gun owners is the trade-off New York keeps creating. On one hand, there’s a big push for “progressive public safety” built around civilian response teams. On the other hand, we keep getting hit with laws like the SAFE Act and CCIA that make lawful carry more restricted while doing nothing to deter the people actually driving violent crime. The message from Albany always feels the same, trust the government more, trust yourself less. Sound familiar???!!!
I don’t think shifting certain calls to clinicians is the issue. Social-worker teams can help with nonviolent crises, if the system is run well. The bigger problem is that the state keeps stripping away our ability to protect ourselves while asking us to believe these new models will magically make everything safer. That’s a hard sell for anyone paying attention, especially when the same NYC lawmakers pushing DCS openly treat licensed, background-checked gun owners as a public-safety threat.
The real question isn’t whether crisis teams can be useful. The data shows they can. The real question is whether NYC is willing to pair that with a rational approach to the Second Amendment, or if they’re going to keep treating lawful carry as something to be restricted piece by piece. NYC can invest in social services all it wants, but until the state acknowledges that criminals aren’t the ones standing in permit lines, no amount of “progressive public safety” will fix the imbalance.
That’s why the trade-off feels one-sided. We’re asked to surrender more rights in exchange for promises of safety, while the people writing these laws refuse to distinguish between responsible gun owners and the individuals who actually commit violent crime. That’s not a fair trade in any context, and nothing coming out of NYC politics suggests that’s going to change anytime soon.
Oh BTW, let’s not forget that Mamdani walks around with an extensive NYPD detail, not a team of social workers. That alone tells you everything about how confident he really is in the model he’s selling to the rest of us.
