Mayor Zohran Mamdani is replacing four of five mayoral appointees on New York’s police complaint board, framing the shake-up as accountability while unions warn it will deepen anti-cop bias.

City Hall confirmed the overhaul of the Civilian Complaint Review Board to amNewYork, naming Reginald Greene, Lisa Hoyes, Lisa Landau and Wesner Pierre as the new mayoral picks.

They replace John Siegal, Pat Smith, Sherene Crawford and Rahul Agarwal. June Northern, appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams in 2023, stays on the board. The announcement came Monday and lands less than three months after Mamdani installed Jennifer Jones Austin as the CCRB’s first permanent chair in nearly six years.

Mamdani cast the changes as a transparency upgrade for the city’s independent police watchdog, which investigates misconduct complaints and recommends discipline.

"I am proud to announce these new appointments to the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Public safety is impossible without accountability. New Yorkers deserve an oversight system that operates with transparency and integrity. These new board members will advance that mission and strengthen the public’s trust in our city’s government."

Jones Austin welcomed the arrivals and thanked the departing members for finishing their terms.

"On behalf of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, I welcome Mayor Mamdani’s Board appointees, and I express heartfelt gratitude to departing Board members who served out their terms with dedication."

New appointees bring defense and social-justice résumés

The incoming slate tilts heavily toward public-interest law, defense work and nonprofit advocacy.

Greene works as a mediator at JAMS. He previously served as an assistant district attorney and deputy chief of legislation and policy in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and he was a founding school principal.

Hoyes is assistant dean at NYU School of Law, where she leads the Public Interest Law Center. She spent time as a federal public defender and nearly eight years at the Bronx Defenders.

Landau heads the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School. She earlier served as general counsel at the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and as chief of the state attorney general’s Health Care Bureau.

Pierre is CEO of Partnership With Children, a nonprofit focused on youth mental health. He previously worked at CAMBA, where he launched Brownsville In Violence Out, and held a leadership post at the Harlem Children’s Zone.

The CCRB also includes members selected by the City Council, the public advocate and the police commissioner. Mayoral seats give City Hall direct influence over the board’s direction, and Mamdani is using nearly all of them at once.

That pattern fits a broader mayoral push that has already drawn sharp pushback from officers and their unions, including internal fights over pressure on Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Use-of-force review and a high-profile shooting case

The board changes follow Mamdani’s announcement earlier this month of the NYPD’s first comprehensive review of use-of-force policies in a decade, paired with other accountability measures.

Police unions rejected the framing immediately. Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said any force-policy review must examine the CCRB itself.

"There should be no review of the NYPD’s use-of-force policies without a corresponding review of the blatantly biased and unjust way those policies are interpreted by the Civilian Complaint Review Board."

Detectives’ Endowment Association President Scott Munro accused the mayor of empowering what he called a “biased, anti-police CCRB” while undermining the department.

Those objections sit against the backdrop of the March 2024 fatal shooting of Queens teenager Win Rozario. Officers Salvatore Alongi and Matthew Cianfrocco were involved. Alongi retired with an accidental disability pension before a disciplinary trial. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch acknowledged the NYPD failed to notify the CCRB before that retirement was approved and apologized, calling it human error. The CCRB said proceedings against Cianfrocco will continue.

Critics see a familiar cycle: high-profile cases, process failures, then political appointments sold as reform. Supporters of the mayor call it overdue oversight. The facts show a rapid concentration of mayoral power on the board that judges the police.

Mamdani’s own coalition has shown fractures on policing and related fights, visible in how Democratic Socialist youth chapters have turned on him over NYPD leadership.

Accountability rhetoric meets union reality

Mamdani insists public safety requires accountability and that the new members will rebuild trust. The union presidents counter that the CCRB already interprets rules in a slanted way and that stacking it with defense lawyers and social-justice advocates will not fix bias, it will lock it in.

Greene’s prosecutor background offers one counterweight. The rest of the list, public defender, Bronx Defenders veteran, social-justice center head, youth-nonprofit CEO, tracks the activist lane that has long pressed for tighter constraints on officers.

New Yorkers living with street crime do not need another layer of process theater. They need clear rules, fair investigations, and a department that can act without political second-guessing at every turn. The mayor’s statement never addresses the union charge that the board itself needs scrutiny.

His wider record keeps feeding the same debate. Policy fights over delivery rules have already prompted warnings that Amazon could shutter warehouses and cut thousands of jobs if his agenda advances.

Healthcare priorities have drawn similar heat, with reporting that illegal immigrants retain top hospital access while citizens face Medicaid limits under city approaches tied to his leadership.

What the board change actually delivers

Four seats flipped. One Adams holdover kept. A new chair already in place. A use-of-force review underway. And police labor leaders on record calling the oversight body biased.

That is the verified sequence. Mamdani gets to define “accountability” through personnel. Officers get a board whose newest voices come largely from the defense and advocacy side. The public gets promises of transparency and integrity without any accompanying concession that the CCRB’s own track record requires the same hard look the mayor wants for the NYPD.

High-profile moments continue to dog the administration, from policing disputes to the bipartisan anger after Mamdani and AOC were caught laughing during a 9/11 victims’ name reading.

Personnel is policy. Replacing four-fifths of the mayor’s CCRB slate in one stroke is not a routine refresh. It is a deliberate reset of the body that can recommend discipline against the men and women who patrol the city.

Taxpayers and lawful residents will judge the results by whether streets feel safer and investigations stay fair, not by how many progressive résumés now sit on the watchdog board.