Reversing Progress: The Cost of Mamdani’s “Caring” City

Step onto the 2 train at Chambers Street after a late practice, and suddenly the commute home shifts from routine to daunting. You scan the car before carefully choosing a seat, near the middle of the train, where there are more people. You keep your headphones’ volume low, your bag hugged to your chest, your eyes alert. The screech of the track is constant, but beneath it lies a growing feeling that anything could happen, and you need to be prepared when it does.

Recently, incidents like the stabbing at Grand Central have forced many students to confront a reality that is increasingly more dire. For teens commuting alone across New York City, safety is no longer something we can take for granted; it is something we have to actively seek out. The simple act of getting home has become a process of vigilance. On packed platforms and in the emptier train cars near our school, there is a shared and unspoken understanding to stay aware and move quickly.

At the center of this growing anxiety is the increasing visibility of homelessness in the city’s transit systems and in the streets. Unhoused individuals should not be criminalized, as many are affected by systemic failures such as inadequate mental health support and the rising cost of housing. However, the truth is that simply ignoring this crisis on public safety is harmful to everyone.

In 2022, Former Mayor Eric Adams implemented protocols to involuntarily hospitalize homeless individuals who were deemed unable to care for themselves. This was a proactive safety measure later deemed the “Compassionate Interventions Act,” created to improve the quality of life for New Yorkers. This policy enabled police officers and outreach teams to remove individuals in severe mental health crises from public spaces and connect them to hospitals. 

In 2025, according to the NYPD’s Historical Crime Data, the city saw a 19.1 percent drop in murders and a 14 percent decrease in shooting incidents in the years after the act’s implementation. This progress came on the heels of Mayor Eric Adams’s proactive enforcement model, which included the deployment of 1800 nightly officers and the specialized Subway Co-Response Outreach teams. Together, they drove the total transit arrests up by 78 percent, contributing significantly to the fall in murder rates. Although this system was not perfect, it acknowledged the severity of the problem and took measures to provide a solution.

And yet, this initiative addressed only half of the problem. While murder rates and shootings plunged, Brennan Center for Justice data shows that misdemeanor assaults remained stubbornly high. These offenses ranged from physical altercations to menacing threats and continued to instill an inescapable fear in the daily commuter experience. What’s more, felony assaults, which involve serious bodily injury or the use of deadly weapons, have escalated by nearly 42 percent since 2019. If anything, these findings show a persistent layer of danger that makes the case for government intervention stronger. 

But while we tightened our grip on our bags, City Hall loosened its grip on the policies that once kept these rides safe. Critics of the Adams policies raised concerns about this policy limiting civil liberties and argued that involuntary hospitalization risked sweeping too broadly and disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. There were fears that individuals might be removed without sufficient medical evaluation. In response, the current Mamdani administration has chosen to dismantle and dismiss this “safety switch,” and replace it with a clinician-led approach built on voluntary consent. Under this approach, clinicians and outreach workers offer services like shelter placement and hospital evaluations, but only if the individual agrees. In practice, this means that law enforcement can no longer use their judgement to hospitalize individuals who are clearly unable to care for themselves or who pose a clear danger to the public. 

The problem is that those in severe mental health crises are often unable to give meaningful consent. The Mamdani administration prioritizes an individual’s right to refuse help over the city’s obligation to provide it. By rejecting proactive intervention in the name of ideological “care,” we create a system that responds only after harm has taken place. 

In doing so, everyday New Yorkers, students, and anyone just trying to get home are forced to bear the cost of inaction. This stance is an abandonment of responsibility. When we allow someone with severe, untreated mental illness to remain on a subway platform in a state of crisis and instability just because they haven’t “consented” to leave, we are protecting their civil liberties in vain.

A more proactive system does not have to repeat these same flaws. Factors like clearer medical thresholds, stronger oversight, and trained clinicians working alongside law enforcement could ensure that intervention is both humane and effective. The choice does not have to be between neglect and coercion. When we refine our policies instead of abandoning them, when we take proactive measures to call forth change, the city can address civil liberty concerns of the past and safety failures of the present.

The city must restore a form of involuntary action that is both legally and morally effective. “Care without correction,” as framed by the Mamdani administration, risks becoming care without action. True compassion requires intervention. We deserve a city where every New Yorker can walk through our streets and public transport systems without fear. Safety is the first right of every New Yorker, whether they have a roof over their head or not.