Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Appoints Renita Francois as Deputy Mayor for Community Safety
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
Good afternoon, everyone. It is an immense pleasure to be here. And there are a number of people that I want to thank for making this afternoon a good one. First, I want to say thank you to my chief of staff, Elle Bisgaard-Church. She brought this idea to life over the course of our campaign and she has brought it to fruition now within our administration. And I want to say thank you to my First Deputy Mayor, Dean Fuleihan, [and] members of my leadership team, many of whom are here with us. I want to say thank you to our public advocate, Jumaane Williams, and so many of our partners in the Council; we have Council Member Althea Stevens, Council Member Sandy Nurse, Council Member Tiffany Cabán, Council Member Yusef Salaam, Council Member Alexa Avilés, and Council Member Shahana Hanif. And a special shout out as well to all of the advocates, community leaders and CMS groups who are gathered with us here today. It is an immense privilege to serve the people of New York City as their mayor. To strive every day to build a city that is more affordable, that is fairer, that is happier and healthier. As we seek to fulfill the public's trust, we do so with a top priority that does not waver. Ensuring that every New Yorker is safe in the city that they love. It is that commitment to a safe New York City that brings us together today as we make a groundbreaking announcement. One that fulfills the change that more than 1 million New Yorkers voted for. And one that will allow this city to approach public safety with the seriousness, innovation and commitment it deserves. I am proud that shortly I will be signing an executive order to create the Office of Community Safety — the first major step towards building the Department of Community Safety. This executive order will appoint not only a commissioner of the Office of Community Safety, centralizing existing public safety agencies under the jurisdiction of the OCS. Agencies which include the Office of Crime Victim Services, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, the Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence, the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes and the Office of Community Mental Health. It will also be a part of an announcement that I am delighted to make this afternoon. Which is that Renita Francois will serve as New York City's first ever deputy mayor— [Crosstalk and applause] I didn't even get to finish her title. She will be New York City's first ever deputy mayor of community safety. Renita's commitment to justice began in her childhood in South Central LA, continued in her early career working in Brooklyn Family Court, and has been guided by the many years she has spent trying to transform both the way that government approaches public safety and the outcomes it can deliver. Over the past four years, Renita has helped guide the work of Beyond Impact, formerly known as Tides Advocacy, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing social change. Before that, for nearly seven years, from 2015 until 2022, Renita worked in the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, helping to lead the Mayor's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety. The Mayor's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety represented a precursor to much of the work that Renita will now lead as the Deputy Mayor overseeing the Office of Community Safety. As the deputy director and later the executive director of that [office], Renita sought to improve safety across our city with community-driven solutions, violence reduction and intra-agency coordination. This was a demanding role with immense responsibility, both in terms of the hundreds of millions of dollars in investments that Renita oversaw and the expectations that New Yorkers placed in her to make our city one where they were safe and knew that they were when they would let their children play outside, or take the subway at night, or walk the halls of their public housing development. Those expectations remain front of mind for millions of New Yorkers who call this city their home, and they will be what I turn to Renita to fulfill. As Renita leads as our deputy mayor and oversees the Office of Community Safety, she will have a clear purpose—to deploy effective, evidence-based solutions that target the root causes of violence so that no New Yorker falls through the cracks. For too long, we have approached crime and safety by placing only ever-expanding expectations on the [New York] Police Department as we have asked them to address every failure of our social safety net. Crime is one of the most complex issues we face, and yet our city's approach for far too long has been to rely on a patchwork of programs to deal with interconnected problems. No longer can we sustain a cobbled-together approach to an issue of such immense importance. We must instead pursue a whole-of-government model — one where our strategies are centralized and implemented with coordination and at scale, and one which a deputy mayor oversees. This will demand a multifaceted approach to a wide array of challenges across the city. It will require ambition, compassion, and competence. And I am lucky because I can think of no one better prepared to deliver exactly that and assume exactly this responsibility than Renita. I want to speak about some of the areas where the OCS will lead. The Office of Community Safety will house three divisions: the Division of Neighborhood Safety, the Division of Community Mental Health and the Division of Strategic Initiatives. First, the Division of Neighborhood Safety will focus on violence prevention and victim support. It will oversee violence prevention, hate crime prevention, domestic and gender-based violence prevention, and it will also provide survivor services. By centralizing that work within the same division, we will be able to bring unprecedented strategic focus to preventing violence in this city. The Division of Neighborhood Safety will also confront the pernicious scourge of gun violence, which has stolen the lives of far too many of our fellow New Yorkers. As part of the executive order that I will be signing shortly, the commissioner of OCS will serve as the chair of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. The OCS will invest in the community-based violence interruption programs that have a proven record of success, and it will expand the crisis management system. I am honored to have leaders within CMS here with me today. So many New Yorkers can speak to the efficacy and lasting impact of the work that they have done. We are going to give them the support that they need to widen their reach. As hate violence has surged across our city, with a pointed focus on Jewish New Yorkers, Muslim New Yorkers, Black New Yorkers, Asian New Yorkers, as well as our LGBTQIA+ community, the work that OCS will lead on hate violence prevention has never been more critical. OCS will confront hatred head-on by reinvigorating the Interagency Committee on Hate Crimes, creating new restorative justice processes, and growing our youth-focused efforts, included by strengthening the school buy-ins response team. Finally, we know that too many New Yorkers who have been victims of crimes have felt isolated, alone, abandoned in the aftermath of them. So, this office will change that, offering robust integrated wrap-around services that meet survivors' needs. Second, the Division of Community Mental Health will usher in a new era for our city's crisis response and coordinate longer-term investments in preventative and ongoing care. This division will oversee the Office of Community Mental Health and manage policy for crisis response, including in vital programs like B-HEARD. OCS will guide investment in B-HEARD to provide more support to more neighborhoods, so that the city can deliver the sort of civilian response best suited to meet moments of crisis. Finally, we will employ the Division of Strategic Initiatives as a place of innovation, somewhere where we pilot new public health-based approaches to violence prevention. Here, we will develop new programs to meet the ever-evolving needs of New Yorkers, and to proactively create healthy, dignified communities across this city. Today is a day of ambition, a day where we commit to approaching public safety with the complexity and the innovation that it deserves. The work that Renita is undertaking is how we will lower crime in New York City, and it is how we will make our city safe for every person who calls it their home. As I appoint Renita deputy mayor today, and as we formalize this commitment to improving safety, through this executive order, we are taking a great stride forward in serving the New Yorkers who expect that government will keep them safe. I want to thank all of the advocates, the city workers, the practitioners, the community leaders, the elected officials who have created this vision and are here with us today. Because what you have all done for so long is underscore the importance that City government must place in delivering safety in every single manner in which it must be delivered to each and every New Yorker. And I want to thank you because if it was not for your years of advocacy, of work, and of belief that tomorrow could be better than today, we would not be here beginning with the words of a good afternoon. So, thank you. And I also must thank Renita for returning to public service and for assuming this great responsibility of protecting our fellow New Yorkers. You have long been an inspiration for so many across the city. You have done work, both that is known and unknown, recognized and unrecognized. And you have showed us in that work, the glimpses of the future that we are now bringing to the present. Thank you for all of that. And thank you for serving as New York City's first ever deputy mayor for community safety. And with that being said, with that being said, it is my honor to bring to the podium our public advocate, Jumaane Williams.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source And now it is my great honor to introduce our deputy mayor for community safety, Renita Francois.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source At the core of both the campaign commitment and today's announcement is a North Star on delivering safety to each and every New Yorker, and on finally treating the mental health crisis with the seriousness and the specialization that it deserves. And in the executive order that I will shortly sign, it is not only an order that coheres what had previously been disparate offices in City government into one work stream. It doesn't just create for the first time a deputy mayor for community safety. It also empowers our deputy mayor to create the policy changes within B-HEARD, which is right now one of the ways in which the city responds to the mental health crisis. However, it is a way that has long been kneecapped. It is a way that has been underfunded and under supported. And this is a deputy mayor whose work will ensure that work will finally come to the fore.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source There are going to be a number of different responses to the mental health crisis. When it comes to B-HEARD, that is one of the most immediate ways, when a New Yorker is calling for help, that they can be responded to. And what we're seeing right now is that it is an idea within City government that has constantly been told no, when it comes to support, whether that be fiscal support, or whether it be operational support, or whether it be political support.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source Our vision continues to be to deliver a Department of Community Safety. This is the first step that we are taking. Much in the manner of the way the city took the first step when it came to the Department of Homeless Services, the Department of Veteran Services, the Department of Emergency Management, all began as offices first. And so, today is that first step, because frankly, New Yorkers cannot afford to wait for a City government to finally take seriously these kinds of crises that New Yorkers are facing. And as Police Commissioner Tisch said today, keeping New Yorkers safe requires more than one approach. And it is indicative of our City government's belief that if we want to keep New Yorkers safe, we have to also ensure that we are not just asking police officers to respond to every single issue that comes as a result of the fraying of the social safety net. Today, officers have to handle 200,000 mental health calls a year. That is not a system that is working. Today marks the end of that. Thank you.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source So, our deputy mayor will oversee policy implementation, reform and expansion of B-HEARD to ensure that when New Yorkers are in a mental health crisis, they will actually receive the care that they need and that their only option is not simply a police response. The importance of that is that today there are a number of calls that come in that are deemed to be eligible for a B-HEARD response, but there is simply not the capacity with which to create that. And so, what we will find under this deputy mayor is what it looks like when City government actually is willing to invest — not just financially but also politically — in this as a method of response. And through that, we will find the exact numbers of the ways in which we will finally be delivering this in a way that it's not today.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source So, I'll say that I'm incredibly troubled by the incident and I'm glad that the NYPD is investigating it. The officer has been suspended in the interim. And what I want to say is that this will be a city that cares for each and every person that calls it home. And we know that for far too long, we have not recognized the fact that Black history and New York City history are one and the same. You cannot tell one without the other. I may stand here before you as a first of many things. I am proud, however, to stand here as the second Democratic Socialist to serve as the mayor of this city, following our city's first ever Black mayor, David Dinkins. And I also want to say something very clearly, which is that we are excited to finally deliver a city that can show in its outcomes the fact that it values each and every person who calls it home.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source It is a budget that will increase. I can tell you when it comes. And I say that as a commitment — because Renita's joining of our team is one that we want to ensure is coupled with the kind of support necessary to make this a successful endeavor in our city. And the scope of the work, is to bring together agencies that have for far too long been disparate. They have lived within different portfolios, different offices [and] different organizational charts, separated from the very kind of work that should be binding [them] together. And our city, to put it plainly, has not suffered from a lack of ideas. It has suffered from a lack of political will. And today what we are doing is what we spoke about on the campaign, bringing these different offices, these different divisions, [into] one. And I will also say that this is the start, the start of a work that will only continue in its importance. And I'm so excited for this homecoming.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source I'll say the first task in front of our new deputy mayor will be to provide an assessment of the work that the city is doing today, to see the ways in which it has been hamstrung, and to find whatever has been successful operating at a pilot level and investigate the ways in which we can expand that. And that is an assessment that will span gun violence prevention, hate crime prevention, mental health response, B-HEARD, strategic initiatives. It will finally cohere our city's response to something that has been splintered for far too long. Would you like to add anything to this?
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source First, I'll say that that is a proposal that includes within it an exemption for primary residences. It does not include a primary residence, which is, for most New Yorkers, the bulk of their wealth if they are a homeowner in this city — Yes. The context of this is a $5.4 billion fiscal deficit that we are facing. And what we have put forward are a number of different ways in which we can increase the revenues to the city without impacting middle- or working-class New Yorkers, while also ensuring that it can be sustainable so that next year we do not return to once again inheriting a generational fiscal crisis. Our focus will be, over the course of these next few weeks, in ensuring that we put the city back on firm financial footing. And I'm thankful to have here a number of partners in that work, whether it be our City Council members who are here, whether it be our public advocate, or whether it be members of our senior leadership team within City government, as we look to chart a course to get that $5.4 billion down to zero so that we can start to do the work of making investments into the very kinds of safety that we've been speaking about here today.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source The first is just to underline that this is the start. And so, what we are going to see over the next few weeks and months and years is going to be a fulfillment and an answer to many of these questions. I can tell you without any question in my mind, there are going to be more people than two working within this portfolio. And I can tell you that because [of] the stakes of this work, the stakes of safety in this city, there is nothing more important than that. And when it comes to the 911 responses, right now, we have a program called B-HEARD, where there is a determination made as to whether a call is eligible for B-HEARD. Then there is a determination made as to whether B-HEARD has the capacity to respond to it. The capacity comes from a few things. The number of people they have on staff, the question of whether they're even operable in that specific neighborhood, and the policy determinations. What's so important about that executive order over there, which I will head to after this, is that it imbues our deputy mayor with the policymaking expertise and power to ensure that B-HEARD is actually living up to the spirit of its intention. And why I'm so thankful to have other members of my senior leadership team here is that this work lives in many different parts of City government. We have our deputy mayor for operations, Julia Kerson, standing right behind me. And her work will continue to be that of operations. B-HEARD has operational parts of it that fall within the FDNY. Our deputy mayor for community safety is not just going to be working within this portfolio; she's also going to be in every single room where we are making the most critical decisions about the future of the city, ensuring that the lens of community safety is also being applied. So, the short of this is — sometimes you learn from the claps that maybe you just leave the answer there. Thank you all so much. [Signs Executive Order.] ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Appoints Renita Francois as Deputy Mayor for Community Safety.