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Mamdani wants 'transit ambassadors' — not NYPD — to get homeless people out of subways
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Stephen Nessen
Published Oct 29, 2025
Modified Oct 30, 2025
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Stephen Nessen
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Oct 29, 2025
Modified Oct 30, 2025
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A group of NYPD cops, outreach workers and a registered nurse gathered at the Herald Square subway station about 8 p.m. last Wednesday, kicking off a graveyard shift for a controversial unit tasked with removing homeless people with severe mental health needs from New York City’s subway system.
The group is one of five teams that are part of the city’s Partnership Assistance for Transit Homelessness program, or PATH. The initiative launched under Mayor Eric Adams in response to a rise in people turning to the subways for shelter following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the PATH teams launched in August 2024, the Adams administration has credited them with drastically reducing the number of people with mental illness living in the subways. The mayor’s office said police are central to the effort.
But the program’s future is uncertain: Democrat Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner in the mayor’s race, has pledged to remove police officers from the city’s mental health outreach programs. He wants to launch a new Department of Community Safety staffed by civilians instead of cops.
Mamdani campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec said the candidate plans to ramp up homeless outreach across the city — without the NYPD.
"The Department of Community Safety will create new outreach teams of peers, mental health specialists, and EMTs trained to support people who are homeless or struggling with mental illness,” Pekec wrote in a statement. “The Mamdani administration will deploy these outreach teams in subway stations with the highest rates of homelessness and reported incidents.”
But some people employed with the PATH program said their work wouldn’t be safe without the NYPD’s help.
Each cohort relies on outreach workers to offer help to people in subway stations who appear homeless or unwell. Nurses employed by the city assess each person’s mental health. And if the nurse declares they're a risk to themselves or other people, the NYPD officers are tasked with bringing them to the hospital to be evaluated for up to 72 hours — whether or not the person wants to go.
“You can't do this without police — it's impossible,” said Richard Perkins, a behavioral nurse with 14 years of experience who was part of the PATH team deployed to Herald Square last week. “No one in their right mind would do this alone. You’re going to get hurt.”
The teams were formed in response to a string of high-profile violent attacks by people with mental illness in the subways. Michelle Go died in 2022 after she was shoved in front of a train at Times Square by a homeless man diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The initiative is similar to the MTA’s SCOUT program, a state-funded initiative that includes police and also involuntarily removes homeless people from the subways, but only operates during the day.
A tireless push
City officials estimate a rotating population of roughly 2,000 people with severe mental illness live on streets across the five boroughs. Many of them end up seeking shelter in one of the city’s 472 subway stations. The PATH teams have removed more than 600 homeless people from the subways since the program began, a majority of them involuntarily, according to the mayor’s office.
Last Wednesday’s outreach by one of the teams at Herald Square revealed the amount of labor it takes to force just one of those people into the hospital.
After meeting on the station’s mezzanine, the group descended to the platforms. It didn’t take long to find their first case of the day: A woman with swollen legs was on a bench, not budging as trains rolled by.
When the group approached, Perkins asked her if she’d been to a hospital to treat her legs. She looked up, and said clearly and coherently that she’d just been released.
“Perfect,” Perkins replied. He told her to keep an eye on it and return to the ER if it’s hurting. She said she would do so, and he moved on.
Since the PATH teams formed last year, city officials say they've brought more than 600 mentally ill homeless people out of the subways and into treatment.
Stephen Nessen
A few feet away, a different woman was also on a bench. She was surrounded by black garbage bags.
Perkins also asked her about her health. Like the woman before, she looked up and answered his questions. Her thick shirt was partially open, exposing her breasts. In less than a minute, he’d decided she fit the characteristics of someone with bipolar disorder and needed to be hospitalized.
Perkins explained why he decided she needed to go to the hospital, in contrast to the woman with swollen legs he’d spoken to earlier in the night.
“Her rapid speech, which goes along with bipolar disorder, and her fearfulness — she's showing a lot of fear, which could be a lot of paranoia also,” he said. “And she expressed homicidal ideations: She wanted to kill her husband.”
He told her she’d be taken to the hospital, to which she said “OK” but it wasn’t clear if she understood. The woman remained calm until a police officer entered the mix.
NYPD Captain Hanjie Lu, who is in charge of the police on the team, stepped forward and told her, “They’re going to cuff you for everybody’s sake.”
“You’re not in any trouble,” Perkins reassured her.
Another officer quickly slipped handcuffs on her wrists. The woman, who only identified herself as Bridget, 45 years old, suddenly realized what was happening and began screaming, asking why she was being arrested.
Perkins and the cops repeatedly told her she wasn’t being arrested, but was being taken to the hospital.
“I’m not sick,” she said. ”Open this, open with this please,” she said, referring to the handcuffs.
Train after train pulled in while they waited for paramedics to arrive. A growing crowd gathered to watch the group of police officers hovering around Bridget as she begged them to remove the handcuffs.
“ They're not understanding what we're out here doing, so they assume the worst,” said James Goodwin, gesturing to the onlookers. Goodwin is one of the outreach workers on the team who works as a community coordinator with the city's Department of Homeless Services.
“Like we're ganging up on somebody and that's not it. You know?" he said. "This is part of everybody helping everybody else out.”
After about 30 minutes, paramedics arrived. They initially seemed confused as to why Bridget was in handcuffs and why they needed to respond to the case. To the members of the PATH team, that showed how relatively unknown their program is among other first responders.
Zohran Mamdani argues that taking police out of homeless outreach efforts would free them up to respond to violent crimes.
Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images
The officers eventually took the handcuffs off of Bridget, and she walked calmly up the stairs, got into an ambulance and left for a hospital, where state law allows her to be held for treatment for up to three days. She could be held even longer if health professionals deem she needs care, city officials said.
“ Even if the hospital only holds them for an hour. There's a lot that could have happened in that hour,” said Perkins. “The fact that they're off the street for just an hour or two makes a big difference, especially to the subway riders because we do come across people [who] have a history of pushing people on the tracks, and a lot of them have extensive criminal histories also. So getting them off the street helps.”
Perkins rode along with Bridget to the hospital, marking the 147th time he’s removed someone from the subways since the PATH program launched last year.
A controversial program
The PATH program is unpopular among many homeless and civil liberties advocates, who argue the presence of NYPD officers undermines the efforts of outreach workers. Many opponents also argue forcing someone into the hospital after a snap diagnosis violates their individual rights.
“The presence of a uniformed and armed police officer is going to be detrimental to the efforts of a trained outreach worker to build trust with that individual and to offer them services,” said Dave Giffen, head of the Coalition for the Homeless. “For the most part, all of the interactions that unsheltered people have had with law enforcement have not been ones that they want to repeat, and they've not been ones that communicate to them that people approaching them are there to help.”
Mamdani’s campaign has largely agreed with that assessment, saying the deployment of NYPD officers for homeless outreach takes resources away from more important crimes.
“At the heart of our public safety agenda is a groundbreaking proposal to not only reduce crime, but address these very moments of unease for New Yorkers across the five boroughs by creating a Department of Community Safety that will be focused on the mental health crisis, focused on homelessness, and will ensure that police officers can focus on serious crimes," Mamdani said during last week’s mayoral debate.
Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani wants to replace police with 'transit ambassadors'
Getty Images
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’s running for mayor as an independent and currently trailing Mamdani in the polls, has pitched a more heavy-handed approach that would force homeless people out of the subways if they even loiter in stations.
The Adams administration has argued that softer approaches to homeless outreach in the subways were ineffective, and allowed people to remain in the transit system while their mental health deteriorated.
The PATH teams were established by Brian Stettin, the mayor’s senior adviser on mental illness, who in the late 1990s helped author state legislation known as Kendra’s Law, which mandated psychiatric treatement for some mentally ill people and in some cases allowed them to be hospitalized against their will.
The law, which is named after Kendra Webdale, who was killed when she was pushed in front of a subway train by a man diagnosed with schizophrenia, allows a court to order people to be involuntarily hospitalized or given treatment if they have a severe mental illness.
Stettin said the law has helped make New York safer, and argued the police presence on PATH teams plays a similar role by allowing an expert to decide to forcibly remove someone who is severely mentally ill from the subways.
“ It definitely is a little bit troubling to me when I hear this false choice presented between having police in crisis response and having no police at all,” said Stettin. “To me, the ideal response is to bring the best of both worlds together and have a co-response where police have a role to play.”
Stettin said without police, there would be no involuntary removals, “then it just becomes the kind of street outreach we've been doing for decades with not a huge amount of effectiveness.”
He said the program has garnered interest from officials in other cities looking to address their own issues with street homelessness, including Denver, Detroit and Buenos Aires.
The PATH program — and the NYPD’s involvement in homeless outreach — would likely be restructured if Mamdani wins the race.
Pekec, Mamdani’s spokesperson, said “transit ambassadors” would replace the work of police officers in the outreach, providing “assistance with emergencies, directions, accessibility, and other transit information to riders on the platform."
City data shows the vast majority of people with mental illness in the subway are not dangerous, and are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than to commit one. But people finding refuge in the subway remains an intractable problem.
If the PATH program winds down, it will come at a time when felony assaults in the subways are higher than at any point since at least 1997. Gov. Kathy Hochul has extended a program to deploy NYPD officers to patrol subway cars during the overnight hours.
But whether the police will continue assisting homeless outreach teams is up to the city’s next mayor.
This story was updated with additional information from city officials.
Tagged
new york city
public safety
transportation
Stephen Nessen
Stephen Nessen covers transportation. Since 2008 he has reported on everything from Occupy Wall Street, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, Hurricane Sandy, to Trump’s campaign for president. His transportation reporting has taken him everywhere from the MTA’s secret Rail Control Center to the gleaming subways of Seoul. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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