Mamdani’s Billion-Dollar DEI Policing Plan Puts Ideology Over Safety

With his election secured, incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is wasting no time advancing one of the most radical public safety overhauls in city history a $1 billion plan to replace traditional policing methods with an army of “DEI-trained” social workers.

The key figure behind the plan is 34-year-old Elle Bisgaard-Church, a California transplant and the so-called “chief architect” of the proposal, now officially joining Mamdani’s staff. That hire alone sends a clear message: this is not a campaign talking point it’s happening.

The plan? Dismantle conventional policing and flood city institutions with social workers trained not just in mental health but in the ideological doctrines of anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI).

This isn’t about lowering crime it’s about expanding a political agenda.

Here’s the bigger picture:

• From 2021 to 2024, the Biden administration funneled over $100 million in grants to universities specifically to recruit and train more school social workers with ADEI baked into the curriculum.

• Over 55% of accredited social work programs list ADEI as a core part of their educational mission. Rutgers University, for instance, trains students to develop a “Liberatory Consciousness” an overtly ideological concept centered on dismantling white supremacy.

• Applicants to many of these programs, like those at the University of Alaska Anchorage and MSU Denver, are screened based on their DEI activism, often through personal statements and essays that evaluate their “social justice” alignment.

The accrediting body, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), embeds anti-racist ideology into 8 out of 9 core student competencies. Its standards demand that schools prepare students to “recognize the pervasive impact of White supremacy and privilege.” In other words, these programs are not neutral they are activist pipelines.

This is the pool of talent Mamdani wants to unleash into New York City not just into communities, but especially into schools.

It’s part of a larger national push. According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, between 2017 and 2024, the number of licensed school social workers jumped from 620 to 840, and the percentage of schools with a social worker rose from 27% to 39%. The School Social Work Association of America (SSWAA) is actively pushing to lower the student-to-social worker ratio to 250:1, which would require hiring nearly 200,000 social workers nationwide.

These aren't simply mental health professionals. As the SSWAA states, social workers are meant to be “transformational leaders” for equity and social justice language pulled straight from the Black Lives Matter playbook.

While America’s youth clearly face a growing mental health crisis, the solution isn’t to saturate every public institution with ideological enforcers masquerading as social workers. What students and communities need is real help not an ideological intervention.

Replacing trained law enforcement officers with ideologically vetted activists is not a plan for public safety. It’s a Trojan horse for inserting far-left orthodoxy into every corner of public life schools, transit systems, hospitals, and more.

Mamdani’s $1 billion policing “overhaul” isn’t about safety. It’s about power the power to reshape institutions under the guise of care and equity.

It’s time for state and federal lawmakers to rein in this agenda. Taxpayer-funded university programs shouldn’t serve as recruitment centers for political ideology. Accreditation bodies like CSWE should be held accountable for turning social work into a vehicle for radical activism. And voters should demand public safety strategies that actually prioritize, well, public safety.

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