Mamdani administration's first Black deputy mayor talks reforming public safety

Renita Francois calls her recent appointment as deputy mayor of community safety a “homecoming,” but her return to city politics remains far from the same old song and dance.

- By TANDY LAU Amsterdam News Staff

The former de Blasio administration staffer will now shape and deliver Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s ambitious campaign pledge to shift the city away from defaulting to police on issues like mental health calls and gun violence prevention through the city’s Office of Community Safety, which the mayor hopes to make a full department.

"I was working on neighborhood safety in NYCHA communities in the de Blasio administration for seven years," said Francois over the phone. "I've been a frontline social service worker working on Section 8 programs [and] I've been in Brooklyn family court working with the youth. I'm really excited to bring all that experience full circle here to help build a long-lasting and sustainable vision for community safety for the city."

On March 19, Mamdani handpicked Francois, the former executive director of the Mayor's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety under de Blasio, while establishing the Office of Community Safety. She becomes the administration’s first Black deputy mayor after most recently serving as chief strategy officer and chief program officer at the nonprofit Beyond Impact. A commissioner who directly answers to Francois will lead the Office of Community Safety, which stems from Mamdani’s comprehensive Department of Community Safety plan that was unveiled last spring.

Disability rights advocates have long criticized the city’s B-HEARD pilot for deploying police to nonviolent mental health calls, given that the program exists to divert those calls to civilian responders. Mamdani’s Department of Community Safety plan promises to retool the initiative and fashion it after Oregon's CAHOOTS, a national model that has a three-decade track record without a single recorded death or serious injury.