Public security was the defining difficulty of the 2021 mayor’s race. Town was experiencing an uptick in crime introduced on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and present Mayor Eric Adams rode to victory on his pledge to deal with crime and dysfunction.
Within the years since, murders and shootings have dropped, in line with NYPD statistics — but New Yorkers have been sluggish to really feel as protected as they believed they had been in 2019.
The 2025 mayor’s race has been dominated by a unique difficulty: affordability. Frontrunner Zohran Mamdani received the Democratic major largely due to his relentless give attention to decreasing prices throughout the 5 boroughs. Though Adams, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa all made their very own pitches for addressing affordability to maintain tempo with Mamdani, they’ve usually sought to convey the main target again to public security.
Right here is how every of the main candidates plans to maintain the Massive Apple protected.
Eric Adams
Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch deal with the press concerning the Midtown mass capturing on July 28, 2025.Picture by Dean Moses
Mayor Adams, a former NYPD captain, has made decreasing violent crime certainly one of his signature accomplishments in workplace.
Hizzoner, a Democrat operating as an unbiased, usually touts double-digit decreases in murders and shootings and vastly lowered subway crime throughout his tenure. He consistently notes that New York is the “safest city” in America.
Murders and shootings had dropped by 36% and 54% respectively over the primary six months of this 12 months in comparison with the identical interval in 2021, half a 12 months earlier than Adams took workplace, in line with NYPD information launched in July. Adams has additionally highlighted his NYPD taking up 23,000 weapons off metropolis streets since he turned mayor.
The mayor has usually complained that he doesn’t get the credit score he deserves for decreasing crime as a result of many New Yorkers proceed to not really feel protected as a consequence of high-profile violent incidents reported within the media. He has additionally spent a lot of his time in workplace railing towards 2019 legal justice reforms handed by the state legislature.
Adams’ marketing campaign web site offers sparse particulars on his public security agenda for a potential second time period. As a substitute, it says: “Preventing violence by reinventing the anti-crime unit as an anti-gun unit with better trained officers, expanding community-based interventions, and using precision policing to target violent crime.”
Adams’ marketing campaign spokesperson, Todd Shapiro, didn’t present extra particulars by publication time.
Nonetheless, Adams’ stewardship of the NYPD has been roundly criticized.
Though the present NYPD commissioner, Jessica Tisch, is extensively seen as an efficient chief, she is the fourth particular person to carry the place throughout Adams’ tenure. His earlier three — Keechant Sewell, Edward Caban, and Tom Donlon — both resigned or had been compelled out of the job.
Caban left his publish shortly after federal investigators seized his digital gadgets and searched his house final fall — reportedly a part of a now-stalled federal investigation into him and his twin brother allegedly operating a nightclub safety racket.
Quite a few different scandals have rocked Adams’ NYPD in simply the previous 12 months. These embody 4 former chiefs alleging they had been pushed out for exposing misconduct; former Chief of Division Jeffrey Maddrey getting accused of sexually assaulting a feminine staffer and lavishing her with additional time to cowl it up; and Donlon accusing prime officers of operating a racketeering enterprise out of the division.
Adams has additionally come below hearth for embracing heavy-handed policing techniques, reviving a controversial anti-crime unit that has come below recent scrutiny, and taking little curiosity in punishing cops accused of misconduct.
Andrew Cuomo
New York Metropolis mayoral candidate, and former New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo speaks throughout a press convention in New York Metropolis, U.S., August 18, 2025. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Cuomo, who’s operating as an unbiased after dropping the Democratic major to Mamdani, entered this 12 months’s mayoral race in March with a give attention to crime. On the time, he framed himself as one of the best candidate to “save” town, which he stated feels “threatening, out of control, and in crisis.”
Nevertheless, after decisively dropping the Democratic major to Mamdani, Cuomo has largely deserted his “city in crisis” rhetoric surrounding public security. As a substitute, he has spent a lot of his vitality attacking Mamdani as being unfit to guide the NYPD, given the Meeting member’s previous statements closely criticizing the division.
To that finish, the previous governor has proposed boosting the NYPD’s ranks by roughly 5,000 officers to 39,000 — far increased than the present budgeted headcount of 35,000. He argues the staffing enhance would pay for itself by decreasing the necessity for exorbitant quantities of obligatory additional time.
Cuomo has proposed elevating cops’ beginning salaries by providing a $15,000 signing bonus for brand new officers. He stated the transfer would strengthen recruitment by making the NYPD extra aggressive with police departments in close by jurisdictions.
To maintain cops on the power, Cuomo floated providing what he dubbed “retention incentives” to sure officers. The incentives vary from a $5,000 annual stipend for officers of their second by way of fifth 12 months who meet sure standards to a $3,000 stipend for these of their sixth by way of ninth years.
Cuomo additionally needs to broaden the controversial Strategic Response Group (SRG), which responds to terror incidents and handles protests, by 400 officers.
Moreover, Cuomo has pledged to double the variety of cops patrolling the subways by 4,000.
Adams and Sliwa have attacked the previous governor for signing the 2019 legal justice reforms into regulation. Many Republicans and a few reasonable Democrats blame the laws, which included adjustments to the state’s money bail and discovery legal guidelines, for the rise in crime that town skilled throughout the pandemic.
In response, Cuomo has insisted that the reforms had been essential to right inequitable legal justice insurance policies. He has additionally pointed to focused rollbacks Gov. Kathy Hochul made to the legal guidelines within the years since to provide judges extra discretion.
Zohran Mamdani
New York Metropolis mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani arrives for a ceremony marking the twenty fourth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 assaults on the World Commerce Heart on the 9/11 Memorial and Museum within the Manhattan borough of New York Metropolis, U.S., September 11, 2025.REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Mamdani’s signature public security proposal is to take away a bevy of obligations from the NYPD and assign them to a brand new non-law enforcement company. Underneath his proposal, the “Department of Community Safety” can be charged with responding to psychological well being crises both on the streets or on the subways, stemming gun violence, and offering companies to victims.
The Division of Group Security would come with devoted psychological well being and homelessness outreach groups in 100 subway stations in addition to the conversion of vacant industrial models within the subways for employees to make use of for offering medical remedy. These groups would come with a psychological well being skilled, an EMT, and a peer, in line with the plan.
The company would have a roughly $1 billion price range. Mamdani says these {dollars} would come from $605 million in already allotted cash for current packages that might be folded into the division and one other $400 million in new funding, which may very well be gleaned from elevating earnings taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers.
Mamdani’s opponents have criticized the proposal as unworkable, arguing that social employees are ill-equipped to take care of conditions that might flip violent. Nevertheless, the Democratic nominee contends that the company would relieve cops of duties they by no means needed within the first place.
Mamdani says shifting these duties elsewhere would cut back the quantity of compelled additional time officers should work.
“When I started running this race for mayor, on average about 200 officers were leaving the department each month; that number has now climbed above 300,” Mamdani stated at a Important Metropolis discussion board final week. “In writing around that development, there has been a real focus on this question of forced overtime…This really reduces a sense of quality of life for many of these same officers.”
Whereas Mamdani has emphasised his want to enhance NYPD officers’ high quality of life, his previous feedback bashing the division and requires radical reforms have been certainly one of his best vulnerabilities on the marketing campaign path.
In 2020, Mamdani — like many different progressive elected officers on the time — known as for defunding the NYPD. He additionally slammed the division as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety” in a collection of social media posts that 12 months.
Since launching his mayoral marketing campaign, nevertheless, Mamdani has modified his tune.
He says he’s not operating to defund the police, as a substitute proposing to maintain its budgeted headcount of 35,000 officers flat.
“To be very clear, as I have been over the course of this campaign, I’m not defunding the police, I’m not running to defund the police,” Mamdani stated in July.
Moreover, Mamdani advised the New York Occasions final week that he’ll apologize to officers for his 2020 social media posts, which he has described as a product of frustration with cops within the wake of George Floyd’s homicide by the hands of a Minneapolis officer that 12 months.
Nonetheless, Mamdani’s opponents have charged that voters mustn’t purchase his pivot on policing and may maintain him to his previous statements. They contend he would endanger New Yorkers’ public security by working to dismantle the division he’s entrusted to guide.
Cuomo stated Mamdani has been “wholly derogatory” of and “disrespectful” to the police.
“He’s called the New York Police Department wicked, he’s called them corrupt, he’s called for the defunding of the police department,” Cuomo stated in a video posted on Tuesday.
Mamdani has additionally taken flak for pledging to dismantle the SRG, which he says has been too heavy-handed in its dealing with of the policing of protests. He has additionally confronted strain to retain Tisch as police commissioner, although he has not dedicated to doing so.
Curtis Sliwa
Curtis Sliwa speaks throughout a vigil for U.S. right-wing activist and commentator Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot whereas talking at an out of doors occasion at Utah Valley College, at Madison Sq. Park in New York Metropolis, U.S., September 12, 2025. REUTERS/Adam Grey
Public security has been Sliwa’s signature focus ever since he based the Guardian Angels volunteer patrol group near 50 years in the past.
The purple beret-clad firebrand started patrolling the streets and subways throughout the 5 boroughs when crime ran rampant throughout the Eighties and 90s and has continued doing so to this present day. He has argued that town remains to be harmful, regardless of NYPD information exhibiting in any other case, and that the police division have to be higher staffed and fewer inhibited to make it safer.
In accordance with his marketing campaign web site, Sliwa needs to rent probably the most cops of any candidate — 7,000 new officers. He contends that including extra cops is the one approach to stem violent incidents.
“I’m the candidate who says we don’t have enough police,” Sliwa stated throughout a Sept. 3 NY1 interview. “I’ll make sure that the streets are safe as I’ve done for 46 years.”
To entice these new hires, Sliwa has proposed creating devoted tracts to the detective squad and management positions, rooting out politics from the promotion course of to make it actually merit-based, and providing advantages upfront.
To maintain these officers on board, Sliwa needs to boost their beginning pay, remove “last-minute” obligatory additional time by instituting a scheduling system, and supply youngster care vouchers to these with younger households.
Sliwa additionally says he would advocate for additional rolling again or utterly repealing the 2019 legal justice reforms, which he claims have made it tougher to maintain harmful criminals off the streets. He additionally needs to push the state to repeal the 2021 Much less is Extra Act, which limits punishments for technical parole violations, for a similar motive.
