NYC Council pushes bill to create Zohran Mamdanis $1B safety agency that would pull cops off some 911 calls

A progressive City Council member plans to push a bill on Thursday to create a controversial bureaucracy pushed by Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani that would reshape the way the city responds to 911 calls.Brooklyn lawmaker Lincoln Restler is set to introduce the legislation that he claims already has the majority of support among the council and would create a Department of Community Safety – which would send civilian mental health professionals instead of cops to respond to many emergency calls.“With a majority of Council Members, I introduced bill to create Dept of Community Safety – core plank of Zohran Mamdani’s platform,” he wrote on social media.“Public safety is more than policing.This agency will establish 24/7 offices focused on mental health, outreach & deescalation to keep NYers safe.”Mamdani campaigned on creating the agency as a way to remove police from responding to 911 calls for a person in emotional distress.The far-left mayor-elect put the price tag for the new department at $1.1 billion.The plan has been hailed from the progressive wing of the party, however, opponents have argued it would add more bureaucracy to the complex response system.Few details have been put forward by the Mamdani team about how they would ensure the calls would be redirected properly with an antiquated 911 system and staffing shortages among dispatchers.Currently, mental health calls where there is no threat to the public or others are already supposed to be directed to a set of mental health professionals under the B-Heard program.But the pilot program launched by ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio and continued by Mayor Eric Adams has struggled to ensure all those calls are redirected away from cops....