New York voters told Mayor Zohran Mamdani that they want more police on their streets and in their subways. Sixty-two percent of likely voting black New Yorkers and 72% of likely voting Hispanic New Yorkers told the Manhattan Institute in January 2025 they wanted the police force expanded. Eighty-one percent wanted more cops in the subway system. In a June 2025 survey, 54% of likely mayoral voters want more officers.

Instead, in late June, the mayor signed a budget that cut 395 uniformed NYPD positions from his May proposal. He also scrapped Adams’s funded plan for 5,000 additional officers by 2028. Council Member Tiffany Cabán said she was proud to have ensured there was no increase in NYPD headcount. Council Speaker Julie Menin disagreed, noting the city fields fewer cops than on 9/11 with more people to protect.

The city is still struggling to rebuild its police force. Even after record hiring in 2025, the NYPD entered January with nearly 1,000 uniformed vacancies. Other departments face the same struggle. The Police Executive Research Forum’s 2026 survey found staffing still below early-2020 levels, with retirements up 16.4% in 2025 despite improved hiring. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has warned that more than 5,300 NYPD officers were eligible to retire by 2025.

In July, the patrol officers’ union warned of a bigger staffing crisis as officers burned out and left. Seeking competitive pay to retain officers, the union said the administration had completed two bargaining sessions without making a wage offer. These shortages result in heavier workloads and more overtime, making it harder and costlier in the long run to keep the officers who remain.

An understaffed department also has less time to prevent the next crime. Every case file I opened as a federal prosecutor recorded a crime nobody was there to prevent. The America First Policy Institute’s Back the Blue roadmap explains why staffing matters. Researchers estimate that every 10 to 17 additional officers save one life annually, with twice the benefit per capita for black residents as for white residents. Another study found that expanding police forces reduced crime without increasing arrests, suggesting officers prevented crimes before they happened.

Washington, D.C., offers a recent example of that prevention at work. President Trump’s August 2025 deployment added roughly 2,000 National Guard members, more than doubling the visible uniformed presence. A Niskanen Center study linked that presence to a 24% reduction in opportunistic property crime over the first six months. During the broader federal law-enforcement surge’s first year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported carjackings down 64%, robberies down 33%, and homicides down 45% compared with the preceding year.

New York has shown the positive impact law enforcement can have not only on public safety, but in restoring dignity to the most vulnerable in its communities. Since 2024, “PATH” teams (Partnership Assistance for Transit Homelessness) have paired NYPD transit officers with city nurses, providing homeless and mentally ill people meals, shelter, or care more than 6,100 times by October 2025. Subway crime fell to a 16-year low in 2025, excluding pandemic years. One participating nurse told Gothamist, “You can’t do this without police.”

Yet the mayor’s policies pledge to “end co-response teams” like PATH and hand the work to unarmed civilian “transit ambassadors.” His March order creating an Office of Community Safety left the future of police-nurse teams unexplained.

Then, on August 31, a woman with prior mental-health-related police encounters stabbed two people, killing one, before officers shot her after a Taser failed. Asked whether civilian responders should have gone instead, the mayor said that model “would not be applicable when there is the threat of violence.” He is right. The city needs both treatment for mental illness and officers who can stop an attack, but his policies say otherwise.

Mayor Mamdani can point to the murder numbers, and should. Murders fell 24% through August, a major credit to the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies/first responders serving the city. However, the murder decline extends nationally and masks the larger, underlying issues with public safety in New York City.

Compared with 2019, before the pandemic-era crime surge, New York’s violent-crime rate was 15% higher in 2025, and car theft nearly tripled. The NYPD also logged nearly 57,000 more complaints in the first half of 2026 than in the same period in 2019, including more theft and harassment reports.

On September 1, Mayor Mamdani stood with Governor Kathy Hochul as she accused President Trump of “defunding the police” over $87 million in counterterrorism grants. While that is a reduction from prior-year levels, New York was still awarded $133 million for fiscal 2025. Meanwhile, FEMA says the state has over $300 million unspent. Before blaming Washington, the mayor should explain why his own $125.8 billion budget dropped hundreds of police positions.

More officers mean more opportunities to prevent crimes and reach people who need help. Mamdani should restore the hiring plan, pay competitively, and keep officers paired with nurses where both are needed. New Yorkers told him what they wanted. He should try listening.

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Brett Tolman is a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah and chairs American Justice at the America First Policy Institute.

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