‘Enormous clout’ needed for Mamdani’s plan to move NYPD duties to new agency, experts say

Today's newsletter is curated by James Ramsay

Weather: ☀️ Sunny, highs in the upper 80s.

It's Monday in New York City, where Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is pitching a brand new city agency that would deploy mental health professionals and crisis response experts to calls previously handled by police.

The challenge isn't pushback from police — former NYPD inspector Kenneth Quick said most officers would gladly give up social-service calls.

“Part of the problem is that the police and the NYPD are just so efficient,” Quick said. “What other government agency can you call and they'll be at your house in less than five minutes?”

Here's what experts say are the hurdles facing Mamdani's vision.

And here's what else is happening:

• NYCHA is stepping in to provide a new source of rental assistance for nearly 5,500 low-income households that are set to lose their current aid because the Trump administration and Congress declined to renew the program earlier this year.
• Hundreds of cases of Legionnaires’ disease are reported by the New York City health department each year. Here's why the city remains a hotspot, despite recent reforms.
  • And here's a look at some of the disgusting stuff cleaning crews find when they check rooftop water-cooling towers for Legionella bacteria.
• Immigrants detained at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan face “crowded, squalid and punitive conditions” and are being deprived of access to attorneys, according to a class-action lawsuit brought by a Peruvian man against Homeland Security officials.
• Security companies said they're being hired to add armed guards, dogs and turnstile protections at New York City office buildings after last month's mass shooting at the NFL's headquarters.
• The FDNY said five firefighters were injured yesterday fighting a four-alarm fire in Queens that drew approximately 170 firefighters to the scene.
• Gov. Kathy Hochul told Fox News yesterday that Republican-led redistricting in Texas amounts to a “legal insurrection.”
  • Gov. Hochul is New Yorkers to back a constitutional change allowing the state to redraw its congressional maps before 2032.
  • For all of Gothamist's political coverage, including exclusive analysis of this year's mayoral race, subscribe to our free Politics Brief newsletter.
• Mayor Eric Adams' administration said it's shutting down operations at New York City’s last hotel dedicated to housing homeless migrants.
• Advocates for domestic violence survivors are urging Gov. Hochul to ban anonymous complaints to New York's child abuse hotline, arguing those calls often come from disgruntled parties seeking to harass parents.

• Mayor Adams' reelection campaign opened a new office last week in a Brooklyn storefront that technically shouldn't be occupied because it has a vacate order stemming from a wall collapse two years ago.
• Andrew Cuomo tweeted last Friday that "a single mother and her children slept at a homeless shelter" because Zohran Mamdani, who makes six figures as a state assemblymember, is "occupying her rent-controlled apartment." (Mamdani does not live in a rent-controlled apartment, he lives in a rent-stabilized apartment that he said he intends to leave.)
• People are allegedly letting their dogs poop and dig holes at a Bushwick baseball field with a no-dogs policy, and the Little Leaguers aren't happy about it.
• The Smith-9th Street subway stop in Gowanus — the tallest station in the city — is getting elevators.
• Life was good for the alleged Food52 corporate credit card scammer.
• Yankees old-timer Mariano Rivera tore his Achilles in the Old-Timers' Day exhibition game.
• On the streets of suburbia, a war is brewing between SUV drivers and golf cart drivers.