If you thought America was finally past the "defund the police" and "send in a social worker" movement, think again. At least in New York City, that sentiment is very much alive and well under the city's new leadership.

According to the New York Post, Mayor-elect Zohram Mamdani is pushing for social workers to respond to incidents instead of trained police officers, and according to available data, the program is failing. Big time. 

The report noted that early data from a program called B-HEARD doesn't look good for the future of social workers responding to incidents that should be handled by police.

Mamdani's closest advisers have already begun the launch stages for a $1.1 billion Department of Community Safety (DCS), which would heavily rely on social workers responding to incidents. And it will very predictably go down in flames.

What's going on?

The B-HEARD program, which was launched in 2021 in some select New York City neighborhoods, is nothing short of a disaster.

The Post noted:

B-HEARD launched in 2021 as a pilot program and only operates in some city neighborhoods, but a bleak audit conducted in May by the city comptroller found it was limping — with a whopping 60% of calls deemed ineligible while more than 35% of eligible calls from mental health professionals never got a response.

The comptroller's office spelled out what the problems are with the program, simply confirming that in no version of reality would such a program actually be effective in a dangerous city like New York City.

“Calls were considered potentially dangerous, were ineligible because a mental health professional was already at the scene, or were unable to be triaged because FDNY EMS did not take the call or all necessary information could not be collected about the person in distress," the comptroller's office wrote.

The Post added:

Between fiscal years 2022 and 2024, the program received a total of 96,291 calls — and 24,071 (25%) of those received a response from a “B-HEARD Team” consisting of two FDNY officers and EMTs, and one social worker.

According to Mamdani's office, his DCS initiative would ultimately absorb the B-HEARD program, and it would be given a significant funding boost to increase the number of teams involved.

His campaign website read, “Its mission will be to prevent violence before it happens by taking a public health approach to safety."

So expensive, and useless

Experts don't believe that the program can be scaled up to the level it would take at having a shot at showing some success, but that's not stopping Mamdani from begging for nearly a half-billion to step it up.

It would be one thing if B-HEARD showed even a little bit of promise in the world's most dangerous city, but it hasn't.

If Mamdani's able to get this going, it'll be marked down as one of his most expensive and most embarrassing failures of his mayoral residency.