Of the various left-leaning candidates in the New York City mayor’s race, Zellnor Myrie would seem to have unquestionable credentials as a champion of criminal justice reform.
Mr. Myrie, a Democratic state senator from Brooklyn, sponsored the Clean Slate Act, a sweeping legislative initiative in 2023 that sealed the criminal records of more than two million people convicted of crimes in New York.
But with public safety a resounding concern among New York City voters, Mr. Myrie, 38, is clearly willing to consider different approaches.
On Wednesday, he will release a public safety plan that calls for hiring more than 3,000 police officers and increasing the ranks of detectives by 2,000 through promotions.
The hiring spree would return the department, which currently has 33,500 officers, to its highest head count in six years, and would enable the city to reduce excessive police overtime, solve more shootings and help subway riders feel safer, according to a copy of the plan provided to The New York Times.
Mr. Myrie’s proposal, just a few years removed from widespead calls to reduce police funding following the police killing of George Floyd, reflects the way crime and the perception of public safety remain among the top issues in the June Democratic primary. After Mr. Floyd’s murder, Mr. Myrie wrote on social media that “police brutality is in the DNA of this country.” He also introduced a bill to end qualified immunity, which shields officers from lawsuits while performing their job.
It may also shape the race as left-leaning candidates seek middle ground against more moderate Democratic rivals like Mayor Eric Adams or the former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has not yet entered the contest.
“New Yorkers want to feel safe when they get on their train and go to work, and they want to feel safe when they’re walking home at night,” Mr. Myrie said in an interview. “The truth is that at this moment, many New Yorkers do not feel safe.
“What we are feeling right now in this city is a sense of disorder in our public spaces, and I believe that our police officers play a role in keeping us safe,” he added.
While overall crime in New York City fell last year, it is still above prepandemic levels. Sexual assaults and felony assaults increased last year.
And a series of high-profile crimes, such as people shoved onto the subway tracks and the death of Debrina Kawam, a 57-year-old woman who set on fire in the subway, have brought heightened attention to gaps in public safety. In an October poll from The New York Times and Siena College, 48 percent of voters said crime was out of control; another 27 percent listed crime as the most urgent issue facing the city.
Mayor Adams, a former police captain who won election in 2021 by focusing on public safety, has trumpeted reductions in crime but also said that it’s important to acknowledge that New Yorkers don’t feel safe. He has partnered with Gov. Kathy Hochul to enable a recent surge of police officers into the subway system.
The mayor, whose re-election bid may be hampered by a looming federal trial in April on a five-count corruption indictment, said the city was “losing the battle of how people feel.”
“We’ve done a good job with the officers of bringing down crime,” he said in a recent interview on News 12. “The battle we’ve lost is these high-profile incidents, someone being burned on a train to death, someone being pushed to the track, these random acts of violence.”
Mr. Myrie is not the only left-leaning candidate for mayor whose stance on police staffing has tilted toward the center.
Scott M. Stringer, a former city comptroller who had the endorsement of prominent progressive groups in 2021 before sexual harassment allegations derailed his campaign, has announced plans to hire 3,000 more police officers if elected and has called for “a dedicated officer on every subway train.”
Brad Lander, the city comptroller, in an interview with the New York Editorial Board, said that he wanted to “acknowledge that progressives, including myself, were slow to respond to the growing sense of disorder coming out of the pandemic.”
Both Mr. Lander and Mr. Stringer had previously called for cuts to police funding after Mr. Floyd’s murder.
The Lander campaign recently announced a proposal to end street homelessness, a plan the comptroller sees as a key strategy to reducing crime. Police are needed to respond to violence, solve crimes and remove illegal guns from the street, Mr. Lander has said.
“Brad believes all New Yorkers deserve to feel safe. Period,” said his spokeswoman Dora Pekec.
Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said it’s good to see politicians understand that “New Yorkers want more police presence, not less,” but he pointed out that increasing the size of the department involves more than just hiring.
Hundreds of police officers are leaving each month, he said, “because they know they can find less pressure, less demonization and better compensation in almost any other policing job.”
In addition to hiring more police officers, Mr. Myrie’s plan would place more officers at hot spots in the subway system and add 150 teams of police and mental health clinicians to be deployed in the subway 24 hours a day.
Mr. Myrie also called on funding the independent Civilian Complaint Review Board at 1 percent of the Police Department’s budget and giving the board direct access to investigative material to speed misconduct investigations.
Jasmine Gripper, a director of the left-leaning Working Families Party, said that the “defund the police” phrase was frequently misunderstood, and that people had lost sight of the movement’s desire to spend more resources on the issues that lead to crime.
Hiring police officers must be accompanied by addressing affordable housing, mental health care and affordable child care, she said.
“We’ve seen Eric Adams make a huge investment in the N.Y.P.D., and yet New Yorkers still don’t feel safer,” Ms. Gripper said. “We still see homelessness. We still see mental illness. Safety is not just policing.”
As a native of New York City, Mr. Myrie, who is Afro-Latino, said he has had negative experiences with crime and policing. His mother was robbed at gunpoint, and he was unnecessarily stopped and questioned by police when he was younger, he said. In 2020, Mr. Myrie and his wife, the former assemblywoman Diana Richardson, were pepper sprayed by the police while participating in a protest.
“I think two things can be true at once, that we can invest in a police force to help us and we can invest in the drivers of crime so that we can prevent it from happening in the first place,” Mr. Myrie said.