Mayor Mamdani’s new deputy mayor for neighborhood security is an anti-cop radical who beforehand led a George Soros-funded lobbying group that pushed defunding police and abolishing jails, The Submit has discovered.
Renita Francois was appointed final week to the $290,000-a-year put up and can head the socialist mayor’s new “Workplace of Neighborhood Security,” which goals to overtake how the NYPD responds to 911 calls.
Francois, 42, spent the previous 4 years working for West Hollywood, Calif.-based Past Influence, most just lately as its chief program officer.
The group’s pet applications embody “Dream Defenders,” a self-described “black-led, feminist, socialist, abolitionist, and internationalist political formation preventing for a world with out prisons, police, capitalism, and imperialism.”
One other, known as “Motion for Black Lives Motion,” embraces the “Defund the Police” motion, helps abolishing prisons and offering reparations for slavery descendants, and proclaims its “daring mission” contains bringing about “electoral justice” for Blacks, in order that they have higher illustration in authorities, in line with its web site.
Past Influence – which was rebranded in February after beforehand being named “Tides Advocacy”— and different offshoots of the Tides Community have obtained greater than $51 million over the previous decade from Soros’ hard-left grant-making community Open Society Basis, information present.
Greater than $35 million went on to Past Influence and was predominately spent backing initiatives that attempted influencing elections and supported so-called criminal-justice reforms, like cashless bail.
Soros sometimes tries to maintain a low profile, exerting affect by donating underneath the radar to lefty candidates — together with former President Joe Biden soft-on crime district attorneys throughout america like Manhattan’s Alvin— and funneling cash to liberal causes and teams.
Open Society Foundations and associated nonprofits he based have doled out greater than $32 billion worldwide since 1984, in line with its web site.
Francois — who earned levels at arch-liberal College of California, Berkeley and Cornell Johnson Graduate Faculty of Administration — has no expertise in legislation enforcement, in line with her LinkedIn profile.
She joined the nonprofit in 2022 after spending the earlier seven years working for far-left former NYC Mayor Invoice de Blasio as a high honcho within the Mayor’s Workplace of Legal Justice, and oversaw its neighborhood security motion plan.
In her new Metropolis Corridor function, she is going to oversee an Orwellian-titled workplace with only one different staffer — and a $260 million finances.
Her major objective shall be figuring how greatest to shift duty for “nonviolent” 911 mental-health-emergency calls from the NYPD to social staff and different civilian responders.
The brand new workplace may also home present metropolis applications, together with ones to fight hate crimes, scale back shootings by violence interrupters, and supply providers to sexual assault victims.
Legislation enforcement specialists, nonetheless, are questioning whether or not emergency response instances will rise as a result of dispatchers might need to spend further time deciding whether or not cops must be despatched on calls involving the mentally ailing.
“I don’t need to predict this, however with my expertise I believe it’s simply going to go very unhealthy shortly if there’s confusion,” mentioned retired NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay School of Legal Justice who served within the NYPD for 3 many years earlier than retiring in 2019.
“I believe [the new office] reveals a bit little bit of naiveness on the a part of the mayor right here. . . . This administration’s making an attempt to reinvent the wheel,” he added.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch raised severe questions on whether or not the workplace is even mandatory, whereas testifying underneath oath final week throughout a Metropolis Council listening to.
She estimated solely about 2% of requires service could be faraway from her division’s jurisdiction and diverted to the brand new workplace, citing 2024 figures exhibiting almost 86,000 of the 4.3 million obtained that 12 months have been nonviolent psychological well being calls.
“I imagine that it’s good to ship the police when there’s a name for a violent individual,” she mentioned.
Critics say the brand new workplace is a big waste of taxpayer {dollars} and that Mamdani is vastly understating the variety of calls requiring a police response.
“This complete company is only a $260 million boondoggle to fill a marketing campaign promise and discover new methods to maintain harmful criminals out of jail,” Council Minority Chief David Carr (R-Staten Island) mentioned.
“In that regard, it seems the mayor discovered the precise individual for the job: an activist who ran a Soros-funded group that advocates defunding police and abolishing prisons.”
In 2024, Past Influence reported $92.5 million in revenues amassed predominately by donations, however was nonetheless $612,715 within the pink, in line with its newest out there tax filings.
The nonprofit’s major bills included $22.4 million for salaries, with Francois pocketing $184,955 in base wage and “different compensation.”
The group additionally doled out $16.8 million for “political marketing campaign exercise” to spice up lefty candidates and causes.
Key benefactors included the Working Households Occasion, which obtained $937,000; Make the Street Motion, which obtained $450,000, and different teams additionally backed by Soros — whose get-out-the-vote groundwork performed a pivotal function in serving to Mamdani upset ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in final 12 months’s Democratic mayoral major.
The Mayor’s Workplace defended the brand new workplace, saying it’s going to unlock cops to answer crimes extra shortly and really enhance emergency response instances that soared the earlier 4 years underneath former Mayor Eric Adams.
“The Workplace of Neighborhood Security will each stop violence earlier than it occurs and be sure that when New Yorkers are in disaster, they obtain the precise response, on the proper time, from the precise folks,” added Mamdani spokesman Sam Raskin.
“We’re constructing one thing higher: a coordinated, citywide system that sends psychological well being professionals and civilian responders to nonviolent emergencies, whereas permitting police to give attention to the work they’re educated to do.”
Francois didn’t return messages.
The deputy mayor informed NY1 on Wednesday she understands it would “be a bit bit scary for some folks” to see civilians somewhat than cops reply to 911 calls, however the administration is dedicated to the brand new “compassionate-first method.”
“We don’t need to lead with worry. We need to lead with hope,” she mentioned.
Critics akin to Carr aren’t shopping for the “compassionate” veneer.
“New York Metropolis already has an Workplace of Neighborhood Security — it’s known as the NYPD. Simply keep out of the best way and allow them to do their job,” he mentioned.
