Crime and safety are issues in any election, and New York City’s June Democratic mayoral primary was no different. But the candidates in New York rejected the conventional wisdom that being tough on crime is a winning political approach. An election exit poll from Vera Action found that 75 percent of New York City Democratic primary voters preferred to “fully fund things that are proven to create safe communities—like good schools, jobs, and affordable housing—and help prevent crime by increasing treatment for mental health and drug addiction and getting illegal guns off the street” over doing “more to get tough on crime.” Such ideas appeared in the policy positions of nearly every major candidate, including front-runners Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Brad Lander, but most comprehensively in Mamdani’s proposal to establish a department of community safety.

According to Mamdani, the department of community safety would “fill the gaps” of safety-related programs and services: “Its mission will be to prevent violence before it happens by taking a public health approach to safety.” It has become increasingly obvious that traditional first responders like police cannot be expected to address every unmet safety need. Instead of using arrests and incarceration as a one-size-fits-all public safety tool, a department of community safety would house and invest in a range of resources like crisis response services, restorative justice programs, counseling, peer support, violence interruption, and others to bring what’s needed to people and neighborhoods in crisis.

The reality is that versions of Mamdani’s department of community safety have already been operating in cities across the country for years, and there is both bipartisan support for them and research-backed evidence that they work. In a recent national survey of more than 2,500 registered voters, Safer Cities found that 82 percent of people, including 90 percent of Democrats and 78 percent of Republicans, supported their city creating a community safety department that is separate from and equal to police and fire departments. The idea behind departments of community safety—that improving public safety requires more than policing—is broadly supported, including by police officials and even a commission created by the first Trump administration.

What departments of community safety do

In many cities and counties, health and safety resources exist through an array of discrete nonprofits and government services, where lack of coordination, insecure funding, and shifting politics can reduce effectiveness (in New York City, for example, more than half of Mamdani’s proposed department of community safety budget would consist of existing programs and services). Departments of community safety, on the other hand, exist to coordinate and manage all of these various tools as part of a single comprehensive public safety plan.

To carry out its mission, a department of community safety needs to be adequately funded, sit at the same level as traditional public safety institutions like police and fire departments, and have leadership at equal status to a police chief. It must also sit outside of the criminal justice system and not conduct law enforcement activities like detention or arrests.

Although creating such a department may seem novel, it is both precedented and practical. In 2020, Albuquerque, New Mexico, created the Albuquerque Community Safety department, the first alternative response department in the country that had equal standing with its peer police and fire departments. Durham, North Carolina, quickly followed in 2021. Both cities’ response teams handle 911 calls involving mental health and substance use, outreach to people experiencing homelessness, and neighbor disputes. They deescalate crises and tense situations, determine if there are safety issues at play beyond what prompted a call, and coordinate follow-up services like counseling, utility assistance, housing, and other social supports.

In its first year of operations, Albuquerque’s department responded to more than 16,000 calls to 911. By the end of its second year, it had taken more than 46,000 calls—with more than 60 percent of them diverted from police response. It also added violence intervention and prevention services to its portfolio shortly after launching, with supports for survivors of sexual violence as well as a division focused on reducing gun violence by helping people navigate the aftermath of trauma, conducting conflict mediation, and connecting people to tailored services. Over a two-year review period, 91 percent of participants in these programs were no longer involved in violent crime.

Last summer featured a series of milestones for the growth and sustainability of Albuquerque’s department. In June 2024, it opened a permanent headquarters embedded in an area of the city that will help it remain connected to the communities it serves. In August, the department marked one year of 24/7 response. And by its three-year anniversary in September 2024, Albuquerque Community Safety had responded to more than 82,000 calls, with 85 percent of those calls successfully diverted from the police department.

Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina cites Community Safety as one of the main reasons that, after more than a decade, the city’s police department was deemed compliant with federal oversight. In the first year of Community Safety’s operations alone, police department use-of-force incidents declined by 53 percent. Albuquerque also tracks more affirming measures of the community safety department’s impact, including referrals to community partners, transportation to non-hospital services, and community engagement events. The department’s performance, capacity, and budget have grown in concert: beginning with a staff of 13 and a budget just shy of $2.5 million, its funding and headcount more than tripled in its second year and grew again in its third year of operations. After five years, Albuquerque Community Safety is now a $23.5 million department with 140 staff. It responds to more than 3,000 behavioral and mental health calls every month, hosts violence intervention programs for adults and youth, conducts school-based programs, and offers a 12-week training academy. And in addition to its headquarters, it now operates a trauma recovery center and a field office, with another slated to open later this year.

Like Albuquerque, Durham’s department began with alternative responses to 911 calls and later expanded to include services that disrupt cycles of violence and support survivors of trauma and crime. Durham is also steadily expanding to include services for people experiencing homelessness, supports for people returning from incarceration, and an Office of Survivor Care to address the unmet needs of crime survivors who are healing from harm. And like Albuquerque, its department is strengthening public safety in multiple ways. In the last fiscal year alone, Durham’s Community Response Teams saved police more than 4,000 hours, and in the year ahead it’s leading an initiative to improve wellness and mitigate trauma and burnout for all public safety departments—an issue across the country.

More cities moving the needle on public safety

Over the past 18 months, Vera has worked with Albuquerque, Durham, and four other cities—New Orleans, Louisiana; Newark, New Jersey; Richmond, California; and Saint Paul, Minnesota—to collectively create a blueprint for what these departments can look like as they evolve. These cities are diverse in terms of size, geographic region, scale of safety challenges, governance structure, staffing, and other factors. All six have also undertaken robust community engagement and strategic planning before launching or expanding their services, making sure their work has local support and meets the needs of the communities they serve.

That such a wide range of cities is dedicated to responsive and sustainable comprehensive public safety infrastructure illustrates its importance and broad appeal. And their successes show the benefits of sustained commitment, appropriate resourcing, and sensible staffing.

In 2007, Richmond became one of the first places in the country to open an Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS). At the time, the city had one of the highest homicide rates in California, and Richmond ONS squarely focused on eliminating gun violence with individual- and community-level interventions that combine positive youth development, cognitive behavioral change, cultural responsiveness, community organizing, and opportunity access. Since ONS was established almost two decades ago, homicides have fallen by 62 percent and firearm assaults by 79 percent. Richmond ONS is now creating a separate initiative to respond to 911 calls involving homelessness, substance use, and other nonviolent crises.

Established by ordinance, Newark’s Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery operates on 5 percent of the city’s public safety budget. Newark has a robust community-based public safety ecosystem, and its office manages and coordinates its comprehensive policies and programs. They also use data to focus limited resources and empower residents to solve public safety challenges in their own communities. Newark’s hard work and community-wide efforts have paid off: from 2013 to 2023, the city saw a more than 50 percent reduction in murders, and there have been historic declines in nonfatal shootings as well.

The Saint Paul Office of Neighborhood Safety employs life coaches trained in cognitive behavioral therapy—recognizing that it can take time for people to make safer choices, but change is still possible. As of April this year, there have been four homicides in Saint Paul—a drop from 11 at the same time last year—and the city saw a more than 50 percent decrease in nonfatal shootings.

The successes are clear. Yet in many places in the country, similar programs and services are not managed as part of a comprehensive public safety plan. This lack of coordination makes these efforts vulnerable to underinvestment, inconsistent political and popular support, and transitions in political leadership.

The origins of departments of public safety

Research shows that communities are safest when residents and local organizations are empowered to work together and take action for the common good. An effective public safety strategy is one that allows for this—by building trust and stability within communities to help them flourish in the long term while also integrating resources that handle more urgent safety concerns like violence and crises.

For decades, various public safety strategies have emerged that have not relied on handcuffs and jail cells and instead have focused more on prevention, public health, and working proactively to address community needs. These approaches complement law enforcement by enabling police to spend more time responding to serious crime rather than situations involving health, housing, or other issues. Additional staffing also helps with police officer recruitment and retention.

Crisis response teams—health system–based, interdisciplinary mental health professionals who support people experiencing behavioral health crises—have been helping people in non-emergency situations since the 1960s. Building on that legacy, Eugene, Oregon, launched Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets in 1989, one of the first such programs to respond to 911 calls. Alternative first response has grown exponentially over the past five years in particular, showing promising results in addressing people’s mental health, substance use, food insecurity, utilities, or housing needs, and in reducing public disorder and trespassing.

Community violence intervention (CVI) programs also grew out of mid-20th-century street work and public health initiatives from the 1990s, focusing on reducing homicides and shootings by establishing relationships with people at the center of gun violence in communities. CVI includes evidence-backed approaches like street outreach, conflict mediation, cognitive behavioral intervention, life coaching, working with gun violence victims while they are hospitalized, and other methods that strengthen communities while reducing violence. In the 2000s, a few cities and counties established dedicated offices to build out public health approaches to violence reduction, often called offices of violence prevention or offices of neighborhood safety.

Government commitment to investing in public safety innovation increased exponentially in 2020 and the following years. Coalitions, advocacy, and responsiveness from elected officials at every level of government led to new policies, services, and resources dedicated to a more comprehensive approach to public safety. There are now more than 60 local government offices of violence prevention or neighborhood safety across the country, each supporting and coordinating community-based prevention and intervention efforts, and many cities have seen steady improvements in public safety since. Additionally, dozens of alternative first response teams have launched since then, and more than 100 now operate nationwide. And in 2022, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline launched as a three-digit number for people in crisis to call, text, or chat with 24/7/365. These alternatives are in place in politically diverse locales: not just New York and California but also Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas.

Yet there are only a handful of places that have standalone consolidated departments with a director who enjoys the same status as a police chief. The status quo means that these places are committing to innovative solutions but less able to address the holistic needs of victims and survivors of violence, as well as the needs of community members who experience behavioral health crises.

Redefining public safety

The growing prevalence of the strategies departments of community safety coordinate and the impact they have already had in cities all over the country suggest that public safety is strengthened by the kind of institutions Albuquerque and Durham have established, and that Mamdani has proposed in New York. One-off programs or department subdivisions can be easily discarded with changing political winds or fluctuations of city budgets. Establishing a high-level government agency—like a department of community safety—to provide the funding, personnel, and infrastructure is paramount.

The kinds of investments that people across the political spectrum know are important for safety—like gun violence prevention, conflict mediation, supporting victims of violence as they heal, offering enough mental health and substance use services to meet people’s needs, and assisting people being released from incarceration—are well supported by evidence. Consolidating these services under one umbrella, prioritizing residents’ needs, and continuously learning from experience will improve both efficiency and impact.