Incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has tapped the chief architect of his most controversial idea — a plan to replace cops with social workers — to help run his new administration.
Mamdani’s pick? Elle Bisgaard-Church, a California-born, Ivy League-educated Democratic Socialist who’s been dubbed the “chief architect” behind his Department of Community Safety proposal — the $1.1 billion plan to send mental-health workers instead of police to certain 911 calls.
Bisgaard-Church, a longtime Mamdani ally, will once again serve as his chief adviser at City Hall, reprising the same role she held on his campaign and in his state assembly office. She’s been credited with shaping Mamdani’s message to voters and keeping close ties with the Democratic Socialists of America throughout his rise.
Critics say she’s the brains behind one of the most divisive public-safety ideas in modern NYC politics — a sweeping plan to pull police back from “non-violent” emergencies, especially in subway stations.
According to CBS News, Bisgaard-Church helped draft the proposal after consulting mental-health experts, public-safety officials from other cities, and even former NYPD Chief of Department Rodney Harrison.
But her politics leave little doubt where she stands. During a recent interview with City & State, Bisgaard-Church said, “I still feel daily, deeply ashamed to live in a place where we allow people to sleep on concrete at night … and I fundamentally believe it doesn’t have to be that way. It represents (a) political choice.”
She added: “The place where I have seen that shared sense of rage at such a moral failure has been in a handful of movement organizations, including New York City DSA.”
Sources say Bisgaard-Church also set up weekly coordination meetings with the DSA’s New York City chapter during Mamdani’s campaign — a sign that movement activists could now have a direct line into City Hall.
With Mamdani promising to “reimagine public safety” and his new top aide carrying the socialist torch, even supporters admit the stakes — and the stakes — have never been hotter.
More over at Fox News:
Mamdani's top incoming aide was 'chief architect' of radical proposal overhauling NYPD https://t.co/tZ0ctA9UAN
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