Last month Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he planned to boost the NYPD’s headcount by 580 officers in order to staff a new Bronx borough command and to support added officer training.

But in this week’s final budget deal, the plan was scrapped.

What You Need To Know

The final city budget did not include a plan to increase NYPD headcount by 580 officers.

The plan had faced pushback from the Mayor’s progressive allies, including the NYC-DSA.

Speaker Julie Menin and Republican Council Members expressed disappointment with the last-minute reversal.

“I do think we got to the right outcome in the end,” Nick Encalada-Malinowski, an organizer with the activist group VOCAL-NY, said.

VOCAL-NY was among several progressive advocacy groups that protested the mayor’s plan.

Even the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took the unusual step of rebuking the mayor, saying in a statement the plan ran “counter to the values of the socialist and working-class movement that elected him.”

Mamdani said this week that he had reversed the decision in consultation with Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

“It’s like a signal of good leadership, I think, to be able to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to take feedback on something and then change my decision,’” Encalada-Malinowski said.

“We were told we were getting these 580 cops for months,” Republican Council Member Frank Morano of Staten Island, said. “I don’t understand why the day before we get this budget, that’s when all of a sudden things change.”

Morano was among six City Council members who voted against the budget Tuesday night, in part because of the mayor’s last-minute change of heart on NYPD headcount.

“Public safety decisions should be driven by what we need, and what neighborhood needs are, not ideological pressure,” he said. “And unfortunately, I think that’s what happened here.”

But the move also rankled some Democrats.

“I strongly disagree with that decision, and I told him that,” City Council Speaker Julie Menin said in an interview Wednesday on NY1’s “Mornings On 1.”

Menin said rapes, felony assaults, subway crime and hate crimes are on the rise.

“We need those officers. We’ve been pushing for those officers,” she said. “So that is something I’m deeply disappointed at that 11th-hour decision.”

Menin also expressed disappointment that the budget did not include a pay raise for EMS first responders or funding to add a fifth firefighter at 86 engine companies.