Designating selected parks where safety and order are maintained solely by community stewards and park staff, not NYPD.
The Park Without Patrols: A Pilot for Truly Public, Police-Free Recreation
Parks should be sanctuaries for relaxation and play, yet for many New Yorkers, especially youth of color, they are sites of police surveillance and harassment. Zhoran Mamdanis bold pilot project would designate a handful of parks across the city as Community Stewardship Parks, where the NYPD is formally prohibited from conducting patrols or enforcing quality-of-life laws. Instead, safety and community norms are maintained by a team of non-uniformed Park Ambassadors (trained in conflict resolution and first aid) and community volunteers. The goal is to prove that public space can be peaceful and welcoming without the threat of state violence, fostering a different model of shared responsibility.
In these parks, rules are set and enforced through community agreement and gentle peer pressure, not criminal penalties. A dedicated phone line connects to the Park Ambassador team for any issues. For serious emergencies, the Ambassadors can call the citys Crisis Responder Corps or, as a last resort, a specialized, non-patrol police unit, but the default is de-escalation and mediation. The parks would feature enhanced programmingconcerts, sports leagues, art classesto encourage positive use. The pilot would be rigorously evaluated on metrics of reported feelings of safety, usage rates, and incidents of serious crime compared to traditionally policed parks.
A park with a cop on every corner is a park under occupation, not a park for liberation, Mamdani says. This pilot is about reclaiming our public spaces as zones of freedom and trust. It asks: can we govern ourselves through mutual respect and shared benefit, or do we always need the threat of arrest? By removing the police and investing in community capacity, we will learn how to create true public safetythe kind that makes a teenager feel free to skateboard without being stopped, or a homeless person to rest without being rousted. Its an experiment in democracy itself.
