OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
3:00 PM – Friday, November 14, 2025
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani plans to deploy social workers for 911 calls instead of police officers, despite a similar initiative that is already failing.
The Big Apple launched the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division (B-HEARD) program in 2021 — it currently only operates in some neighborhoods. The teams responding to 911 calls consisted of two New York City Fire Department (FDNY) officers and EMTs and one social worker.
An audit of the pilot program did not bode well for Mamdani’s plans.
Per a city controller report, more than 60% of calls received were ineligible for a B-HEARD response, and 35% of calls that were deemed eligible were not serviced by the division. The reasons for calls with no response are unknown because the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health does not track such information.
From fiscal years 2022 to 2024, the division received 98,291 calls, and 24,071 — or 25% — of those received a response.
Mamdani’s idea is to absorb B-HEARD into a proposed $1.1 billion Department of Community Safety (DCS), which is supposed to “fill the gaps of our programs and services,” according to his campaign website.
“Its mission will be to prevent violence before it happens by taking a public health approach to safety,” the initiative’s proposal reads.
The proposal outlines Mamdani’s plan to overhaul the existing B-HEARD program to “be more effective,” by adding a peer counselor to every team, using “trauma-informed care” and expanding the program to allow every neighborhood to have a team, with the 20 neighborhoods with the greatest need assigned two to three. The document says that this represents “a 150 percent increase in funding.”
Many have offered analysis of Mamdani’s plan of action in light of the B-HEARD teams’ disappointing results.
“The devil is in the details, and here the detail is implementation. The fact that the program is not reaching people does not tell me it’s unsuccessful; that is a matter of resources,” said Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City.
“Zohran Mamdani’s plan to shift the responsibility of determining—over the phone—whether or not a law enforcement response is needed for a 911 call involving an emotionally disturbed person is reckless and dangerous,” warned “Finest Unfiltered” podcast host John Macari, a retired NYPD lieutenant. “This proposal will not save lives or reduce the workload of law enforcement; it will make their jobs harder and endanger civilians, dispatchers and first responders alike.”
“I’ve personally responded to hundreds of them during my career, and I can tell you firsthand, no one can safely assess the threat level of an emotionally disturbed individual over the phone,” the podcaster told Fox News. “Mamdani’s idea isn’t a plan, it’s a talking point. It appears to have been drafted without any consultation with dispatchers, first responders or the families of those struggling with mental illness. If implemented, it will cost lives and further strain a system already stretched to its limits.”
Mamdani’s talking points surrounding law enforcement in the city have shifted over the years. In 2020, before the implementation of B-HEARD, he called for the NYPD to be defunded.
“Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence,” he wrote on X at the time, calling the department “wicked and corrupt.”
Joseph Giacalone, a retired New York Police Department (NYPD) sergeant and professor of criminal justice at Penn State Lehigh Valley, said the proposal is “probably the worst idea I’ve heard of in a long time.”
“I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about and neither does he,” he added. “My question is, what happens when the dispatcher is wrong and someone dies? Is it an oops? The liability the city would be taking on with this idea will be off the charts.”
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