Ask the Mayor Recap and More News From City Hall

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC.
WNYC political reporter Liz Kim is with us on some of her latest reporting on Mayor Mamdani and other city politics. One of Liz's stories prompted one of my questions to the mayor when he was on with us yesterday. We will revisit that with Liz, and revisit a few of the topics we touched on with the mayor. But here's the one her reporting prompted. If you thought Mayor Mamdani was gonna defund the police, whether you were for that, or whether that scared you out of your wits, you were wrong. He announced this week that he's adding more than 500 officers to the department. I asked him if that isn't the opposite of what he campaigned on, which was holding the headcount steady, not defunding it, but also not increasing it, as Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwer were campaigning on.

**Mayor Mamdani** (1:00)
Over the course of the campaign, I spoke about the importance of keeping our budgeted headcount steady. When I came into office, I was informed of two things. One was that although the Bronx was of a comparative size and need to other boroughs, it had only one police zone, which is why we made the decision to split it into two patrol boroughs, like there are in Manhattan, in Queens, in Brooklyn. The second is that we found that while our NYPD officers were receiving extensive training in the Academy, they were not receiving enough ongoing training once they were on the job. We decided to strengthen that regular training so that officers can better do their jobs. Together, because of these two issues, we saw there's a slight increase in the budgeted headcount, and that is as a result of both of these.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:48)
The mayor here yesterday. And with that, we welcome WNYC and Gothamist political reporter Elizabeth Kim. Happy Wednesday, Liz.

**Elizabeth Kim** (1:55)
Happy Wednesday, Brian.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:57)
Can you give us more context for that clip? Or did the mayor just say it plain and simple? This is how they want to be more effective in the Bronx by splitting it into two patrol areas, just like Manhattan has two or more, and they need more time for more young officers on the job to get them effectively trained.

**Elizabeth Kim** (2:18)
Well, that was the first time we heard the mayor first confirm that the city will be adding nearly 600 new police officers. It was his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who made the news the prior day at a city council budget hearing. But that was the first time that the mayor, in fact, said it. He also gave the reason why, which is what we heard. It was because he said once he came into office, he was told that there was a need in the Bronx. They were going to split it into two patrols.
Then he also spoke about the need for more on the job training for police officers. I will say, Brian, I didn't quite understand the rationale of the second reason he gave. I assume he's saying that we need more officers.
We need more officers because those officers who are currently getting trained, they need to have more training on the job. That's how I interpreted it. But it wasn't entirely clear to me. But of course, what he said is true. This is a slight increase to the headcount because there are 35,000 uniformed officers. But it's newsworthy because Mamdani had promised on the campaign trail that he was going to keep police headcount flat.
It's also because of the broader context of what's been happening in the realm of policing under Mamdani.
You know, the mayor, as we know, is a Democratic socialist. As an assembly member, he has been a vocal critic of the NYPD. As an assembly member, he also called to decrease the number of police officers through attrition. He then sort of backed away from that stance when he ran for mayor last year. But nevertheless, he ran on a platform of police reform. And I think what his critics would say is they have yet to really see that materialize. And I think they would point to several things beyond just the news that he is going to expand the force. You know, several weeks ago, just building on reporting that my colleagues have done, I wrote about the intensifying crackdown on low level offenses. This has often been described as broken windows policing. And that fact alone, you know, I think makes a lot of people's eyebrows, you know, raises a lot of eyebrows, particularly among, you know, criminal justice reformers who, you know, took the mayor to his word that he was going to find a new way of policing, and that that would mean diverting some police. And he has said this himself. I mean, he has spoken about it in terms of mental health response. But I think the larger policy behind that is the idea that there are certain low-level crimes that are tied to underlying problems, things like homelessness, mental health, as the mayor has mentioned, drug addiction. And that the mayor was going to use a different type of civilian response to handle those. But we've really yet to see that materialize. Now, to be fair, it's six months, right? The mayor has indicated that he does want to create this new Office of Community Safety. He has done that, but it is a pared down version from what he originally proposed on the campaign trail. It's being funded by with around $300 million. He proposed $1 billion. So all of this is very interesting and something to scrutinize as we go forward.