Mayor-elect Zohram Mamdani wants to deploy social workers instead of police officers to respond to 911 calls — but the controversial plan has already been operating in the Big Apple and is failing.
The early results of a program dubbed B-HEARD spell trouble for Mamdani’s proposed $1.1 billion Department of Community Safety (DCS), a signature imitative that his newly announced chief of staff and left-hand woman Elle Bisgaard-Church helped craft.
B-HEARD launched in 2021 as a pilot program and only operates in some city neighborhoods, but a bleak audit conducted in May by the city comptroller found it was limping — with a whopping 60% of calls deemed ineligible while more than 35% of eligible calls from mental health professionals never got a response.
https://nypost.com/2025/11/13/us-news/zohran-mamdani-wants-social-workers-responding-to-911-calls-but-test-program-is-already-failing/