by Ben Feuerherd
Gothamist
June 05, 2026

… Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch have announced a plan to add nearly 200 new officers to the borough. Tisch said the reinforcements are necessary because of a high volume of emergency calls in the area. She said the department will also expand specialized units, including homicide squads, narcotics teams and units that focus on illegal guns.

… In March, Mamdani announced the Mayor’s Office of Community Safety, a scaled-down version of the standalone city agency he hoped to create to limit the number of emergency calls that police officers respond to. The administration has said the office will scale up and noted other current city agencies began in this manner.

Jeffrey Butts, a research professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said there’s a potential benefit to adding more officers to the Bronx if they’re able to build relationships with residents. “The main benefit of doing that, in my view, would be increasing the familiarity of officers that work that territory and the people who live there,” he said. On the other hand, he said, “ If the increase is just more patrol cars rolling through neighborhoods and watching for crimes that are being committed, that’s just more police presence.”

Butts said he’s hopeful Mamdani is still doing work in the background to build out a more comprehensive public safety network. But he acknowledged it’s risky for mayors to not listen to law enforcement. “If you’re an elected official, especially in an executive position like that, you have to pay attention to law enforcement because they will come after you,” he said.

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