Zohran Mamdani is about to take office as New York City’s new mayor. One of his signature initiatives is the idea of ‘community policing’. This usually gets translated in the press as “he wants to send social workers out to answer 911 calls.” That alone is crazy enough, but as usual, the press does not begin to understand or communicate effectively what is really happening.

A bill has already been introduced before the New York City Council to create what will be called the “Department of Community Safety.” Brooklyn Lincoln Restler, a member of the Working Families Party, is the sponsor. Restler is a radical leftist who has been pushing to defund the police for years.

The bill before the City Council concerns a lot more than sending out social workers to respond to mental health calls. It creates a brand new agency with equal status to that of the New York Police Department and a broad, intentionally ambiguous charter to ensure “community safety” by means of “holistic efforts to prevent and respond to incidents of physical, emotional, and financial harm with specialized resources and responders, and the provision of social services aimed to improve safety, quality of life, and stability of neighborhoods.”

This new department will “maintain no fewer than one office in each borough” and assist in “the coordination of operations among agencies and offices under the jurisdiction of the mayor that are involved in law enforcement, emergency response, crime prevention, victim services, social services, homeless services, mental health, and public health.”

The Department of Community Safety will provide “alternatives to incarceration”, including “programs for diversion from incarceration; services related to re-entry to the community following incarceration; services related to pretrial supervised release; and violence prevention programming.”

The Department will also directly deploy personnel to provide emergency responses to promote community safety. “Such efforts shall include, but not be limited to, the following:

(1) Outreach to vulnerable populations and facilitating the delivery of social services, medical care, and case management, through partnerships with city agencies and community-based service providers;

(2) Engaging in safety patrols, in collaboration with community volunteers, that involve maintaining a visible presence in targeted areas to prevent violence and advance a sense of security, and creating safe passage routes within communities and providing walking escorts when requested;

(3) Participating in emergency responses, in coordination with law enforcement and emergency medical services; and

(4) Providing conflict mediation and de-escalation in circumstances that are not likely to result in immediate harm or danger to the public.”

Oh, and the Department will also by order of the Mayor, “Serve any additional function, or role, related to promoting community safety, including through subsuming the functions and powers of any existing office or agency not established pursuant to this charter.”

It doesn’t take a legal scholar to understand that Zohran and his henchmen are creating a brand new and very powerful agency that will pursue an agenda completely distinct from that of public safety. This new department will be based on the central precept of the Democratic Socialists and their allies. Criminals are the victims. It is capitalism that is the real problem. The guy shoving you on the subway tracks and stealing your purse has been forced into this action by the abuses of an illegitimate system. It is he who must be supported, coddled, and empowered.

In point of fact, though, there is nothing new in this proposal other than the fact that the Marxists now have the power to put it into action.

Former public defender Tiffany Cabán, another radical New York City leftist, laid out this plan years ago when running for City Council. That plan was the product of work done by a whole raft of New York City leftists and envisioned effectively neutering the New York City Police Department, shutting down the prison system, and implementing “data-driven initiatives” to keep communities safe.

That plan would have created:

One of the supporters of this approach, Theo Oshiro of Make the Road Action, summarized its rationale succinctly. “… NYPD perpetuates violence and racial inequity… Tiffany Cabán’s vision is a real blueprint for reducing the funding, power, and scope of the police department and creating public safety by investing in our communities.”

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When Mao Tse-tung was attempting to transform Chinese culture and cement revolutionary control, he employed the Red Guards. They were his shock troops, tasked with purging the system, enforcing his vision, and attacking the “enemies of the people”. Their mission, put succinctly, was to eradicate the “four olds”: “old ideas, old culture, old habits, and old customs”. The Red Guards created societal chaos.

We may be about to see the same thing when Zohran’s Department of Community Safety releases felons from confinement, puts “safety patrols” on the streets to intervene between the police and criminals, and takes other actions to maintain “the stability of neighborhoods.” Standby for the debut of Zohran’s Red Guards.

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