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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently signed an executive order creating the Office of Community Safety, and appointed Deputy Mayor Renita Francois as its leader. The new office has authority over crime and violence prevention initiatives, community mental health services, and victims’ assistance. In a press conference, Mamdani vowed that the office would be the key to “lower crime and make New York safe.”

The office is Mamdani’s attempt to fulfill one of the central ideas that fueled his mayoral campaign — but it's also a pared-down version. Without legislation from the City Council, the new office lacks the power and permanence needed to meet some of the mayor’s sweeping goals, and it could easily get scrapped by the next mayor. There’s also the issue of money. Amid the city’s ongoing budget crisis, the OCS is set to operate in 2026 with $260 million — a far cry from the $1.1 billion Mamdani proposed on the campaign trail.

I spoke to Francois about her new position. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you tell me a bit about your life before working in government?

I grew up in Los Angeles in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when there was just a lot going on… the war on drugs, gang violence... all set against the backdrop of racial unrest with the [police] beating of Rodney King. But me and my siblings had access to enrichment programs and things that help vulnerable families stay stable, such as federal nutrition and housing assistance. These helped my mom, a working woman, afford life in Los Angeles. And that's what we want here for the people of New York. We want the people to know that they can depend on us for the support that they need to stabilize their families. And that's why we're taking this ‘whole government’ approach to community safety.

That is a tough proposition at a time when many people don’t trust the government to solve problems as essential as safety.

I've seen that. My sister was generally suspicious of the healthcare system. She turned to a lot of natural remedies. And when she was in a dire situation with an ectopic pregnancy, which is something that is survivable, she did not access the healthcare system [that could have saved her life]. There are so many people like her who are not reaching for care that is right there because they don't trust that the system will be able to support them in the way that they need. And that's a very important aspect of the Office of Community Safety. We will be working to build that trust with communities so that they can access our critical resources around things like mental health.

You worked in then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, overseeing the Mayor’s Action Plan (MAP) for Neighborhood Safety, which was launched in 2014 to reduce violence near public housing. Is the work you’re set to do with OCS an extension of the things you did then?

MAP was really about centering the needs of the public and responding to what communities say would make them feel and be safe. For some people, that means having access to healthy food. For others, that means having career training or access to some type of benefit that the government provides. We brought resources from city hall down into the community and tried to make a strong connection with residents who have been overlooked for far too long. I think this is really foundational for OCS.

Mamdani’s campaign generated excitement around the idea of a Department of Community Safety, which would have required the City Council to pass legislation. Instead, his executive order created an office, which wields less power. How do you see this iteration of his overall vision?

Our goal is to be a full-on department, and it will be a full-on department. The mayor said, and I've said, this is just a first step. Tons of city agencies have started out like this. If you look at the [city’s] Office of Emergency Management, or the Department of Homeless Services, this is the same approach that they took. We're following an established process.

According to the NYPD, 2025 was New York’s safest year with regard to gun violence. There were 668 shooting incidents, which was 10% fewer than in 2018, the last year with the lowest amount of incidents. Why does the city even need to create an Office of Community Safety?

There are a number of stakeholders that can be credited with us having the safe year that we've had, such as the crisis management system, which exists alongside the law enforcement infrastructure. These various stakeholders play a role in keeping communities safe. But we also want to be proactive. We've seen “safest years” before, including when I was in Mayor de Blasio's office. The point is to keep it going, not to wait around for something to happen and then react. One young person losing their life is too many.

I spoke recently with Sheina Banatte, the managing director of Justice for Eudes. Her cousin, Eudes Pierre, was shot by the NYPD in 2021 while he was experiencing a mental health crisis. Banatte is aware that the OCS is seeking to expand victim services in the city, but what will it offer the people who’ve been harmed by the police?

That's a really good question, and it's one of the really hard questions that we need to bring folks together to think about. I empathize with Sheina and her family. I'm sorry for it, but I think that there is an opportunity for us to really hear from people who have had an experience like Sheina and learn from them about what their expectations would be around how the city can best help them heal. Our law enforcement partners can also learn how we should be responding to these types of issues. The Office of Community Safety is supporting programs like B-Heard because we want to ensure that law enforcement is not the sole responder to folks who are in mental health crisis.

New York first launched B-Heard in 2021. Instead of solely sending police officers to people in crisis, the program is supposed to dispatch mental health professionals. Mamdani wants an expanded B-Heard. But according to a city audit, between 2022 and 2024 B-Heard teams often failed to arrive, and did not respond to 35% of calls they could have been dispatched to. Why keep pushing this program, if it has failed to meet goals?

Everyone can agree that B-Heard has been underutilized and underfunded. The commitment of this administration is to really invest in alternate responses in a real way that we haven't done before. The goal is to build capacity so that this is a viable response. It's about scaling up. It's about improving the program. And I won't pretend to know everything. I haven't even started the job, but I'm looking forward to coming together with the folks who do that work, who know it best. But I know that the commitment of this administration is to invest in a real way so that we have the ability to actually respond.

How do you get other departments and stakeholders across the city to buy in on this new office and the alternative ways you are trying to tackle criminal justice and safety?

If you want to go fast, go alone. And if you want to go far, go together. So of course, we are definitely going to be doing the work to lay solid partnerships across the city, because safety really is inclusive. With [de Blasio’s] MAP program, we worked with a ton of agency partners who had to do things in a new way. For example, we had the Department for the Aging and their kinship caregiver program as a part of MAP. That program was for grandparents who were parenting for a second time. We supported families who are in that situation to be more connected to their young people. So we've done this kind of thing before.

Are there any things you’ve seen around the country that you’re excited about and want to explore in NYC?

[I]n Richmond, California, [there] is a community violence intervention program that’s evidence-based. It's something that we could be doing. I know we have the crisis management system program, but this is really focused on training and workforce development. It provides technical assistance to the folks who are doing the CVI work and for the public sector partners like us. And it's just a different take on gun violence prevention. Folks are doing plenty of good work like that in Albuquerque, Denver, Newark, Baltimore.

There’s so much interest around the Mamdani administration, I imagine a lot of people will be looking to you and what you do as they consider creating their own Offices of Community Safety.

When I was the executive director of MAP, we got so much outreach, even from places as far as New Zealand. It’s always an exchange. We will learn from them as they've learned from us and vice versa. And I think that that's the way forward, not just for New York, but for the country.