As the first-ever commissioner of the city’s newly minted Office of Community Safety, Ayesha Delany-Brumsey is tasked with helping to execute a key piece of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s agenda.
The office may not be as well-resourced as the billion-dollar Department of Community Safety Mamdani originally planned, but its scope remains ambitious: to address the “root causes of crime and violence” and oversee offices already doing work in areas such as gun violence, hate crime prevention and mental health.
Delany-Brumsey, who has a behavioral health background and has worked in both city government and nonprofits, will be responsible for helping to wrangle Mamdani’s broad vision into concrete programs and initiatives — including a plan for reducing the role of police in responding to mental health crisis calls, which the mayor has identified as a priority.
Before she was appointed community safety commissioner, Delany-Brumsey held a position at NYC Health and Hospitals, where she oversaw B-HEARD, a pilot that sends social workers and emergency medical technicians to 911 mental health calls instead of police. Mamdani has called for expanding B-HEARD after its growth stagnated under former Mayor Eric Adams.
Gothamist spoke with Delany-Brumsey shortly after her appointment earlier this month about how she will approach her new role, her initial ideas for tackling mental health and gun violence and what she says to those who are skeptical about reducing the role of law enforcement in public safety. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Mayor Mamdani has issued a broad mandate for the Office of Community Safety. What’s your first order of business in this new role?
My first order of business will be to take that broad vision and work very closely with the mayor, the deputy mayor and our city partners to help execute it.
If you take a step back and you ask people, “What does it mean to feel safe?” people will talk about a range of factors. They’ll talk about stable housing, economic opportunity, the strength of their relationships. Law enforcement will be a part of that picture, but not the whole picture.
The role of this office is really to help coordinate the many parts of New York City government that already contribute to those factors that drive safety and stability, and to focus on executing a few key operational priorities. In New York City, there’s a lot of really good work that’s already happening. The challenge that we have is that it’s not always as coordinated or as effective as it could be.
What do you see as the role of the NYPD in responding to mental health crises?
Police are crucial to public safety, and right now, they are also deeply involved in responding to 911 mental health calls. But too often they don’t need to be responding.
If there is another responder available — and you hear this in New York City when you’re talking to officers, but I’ve also heard it when I’ve talked to police chiefs across the country — that if someone else could respond, a behavioral health professional, they’d be very happy for that person to respond.
There are going to be some cases, potentially, where there’s some indication that there might be risk or violence where police would have to be there, but even in those cases, there’s still an opportunity for behavioral health professionals to provide support and to ensure that the people who are involved get connected to care.
What do you say to people who think it’s dangerous or naive to reduce the role of police in public safety?
I can understand why people worry about that. But you can see with B-HEARD, we’re currently sending behavioral health and health professionals to 911 calls without significant safety concerns. So we’re already showing that that is possible.
You oversaw B-HEARD at NYC Health and Hospitals before stepping into this position. Are there specific changes you think are needed to broaden its reach?
There’s a number of things we will be looking at and examining on how to strengthen B-HEARD.
This program already does great work to support New Yorkers in crisis. Health and Hospitals and the FDNY are sending out teams every day to respond to 911 calls for people in crisis. But what we know is that we have even more work to do to expand that across the city, to strengthen it, to make sure that we’re going to as many calls as possible.
Adams proposed taking EMTs out of B-HEARD because there’s a staffing shortage. Is that something you think should be looked into?
We’re going to be looking at a number of options. It’s too soon in my tenure to really have a good sense of that.
Some mental health advocates say they want peers [with lived mental health experience] to be involved in B-HEARD and they want it to be accessible through the crisis line 988. What do you think of those proposals?
We’re definitely going to be looking at how to coordinate across 911 and 988. And we already have mobile crisis teams that get deployed through 988. I’m really interested in not just replacing what exists, but making sure it works well.
We’ve heard the ask for peers to be a part of this, and actually, Health and Hospitals has already posted a position for [B-HEARD to hire] a peer advisor role.
With the summer coming up, do you have any initial thoughts on strategies to prevent violence among teens?
This has been a really challenging few weeks. I know we’ve had a number of incidents with young people involved in violence and shootings, and that’s always devastating.
We know that violence is often highly concentrated among a smaller group of people in particular places, so focusing really on how do we target or really find young people where they’re at, and the young people who are at highest risk for violence, and work on building wraparound support for them?
That includes things like strengthening our community violence intervention programs, looking at some of the work we’re doing in partnership with schools and thinking about how we can more deeply invest there and move upstream.
You previously worked at Fountain House, which is a place where people with serious mental illnesses are able to relax and socialize when they’re not in crisis. Are there any takeaways from that experience that you will bring into this new role?
One of the things that I’ve learned is that you need to take a really holistic approach to trying to support wellbeing.
It’s very important to identify folks who are in crisis and at risk for crisis and address their needs in that moment, but then once those needs are addressed, to back up and say, ‘Okay, have you been connected to healthcare? Are you supported by your community? Do you have meaningful employment and activities during the day?’
That is the work of the Office of Community Safety, but that’s also the work of us coordinating with the other agencies in the city — coordinating with the health department, with Health and Hospitals, with the Department of Social Services.