CITYWIDE – MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI on Tuesday announced the appointment of Dr. Ayesha Delany-Brumsey as Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Community Safety, which the mayor established in March.
As commissioner, City Hall said, Dr. Delany-Brumsey will coordinate and unify the city’s efforts to address the root causes of crime and to advance community safety. The office will oversee several other offices focused on preventing violence, will expand alternative prevention strategies and wraparound services, and will work to improve crisis response programs, such as B-HEARD, a city program that sends mental health professionals instead of police officers to respond to some emergency calls.
B-HEARD is a cornerstone of the mayor’s plans to reform the city’s crisis response system, but one that critics say has been underutilized by dispatchers and lacks clear guidelines.
Dr. Delany-Brumsey currently serves as Senior Advisor and Director of Community-Based Services in the Office of Behavioral Health at the city’s public hospitals corporation. In that role, she oversaw behavioral health programming, including B-HEARD.
Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, she served as Director of Behavioral Health Research and Programming at the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. She has held leadership roles at mental health nonprofit Fountain House, the Council of State Governments Justice Center and the Vera Institute of Justice. She holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA.
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