The New York Police Department will deploy a Quality of Life division next week to crack down on low-level crimes, a move that critics say could disproportionately target low-income residents.
The department will start the program on Monday with six commands across the five boroughs, including one covering several housing developments, police officials said at a news conference Thursday. The program will deploy officers to respond to 311 complaints, which have been steadily rising even as major violent crimes have declined, according to the police.
Since the city has struggled back from the pandemic, some New Yorkers have complained that a sense of chaos is pervasive, with mentally ill people wandering the streets and subways and a spate of high-profile attacks. They have demanded action.
But the new units, called Q Teams, have already drawn sharp criticism from New Yorkers who say they are reinventions of street crime units embraced by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in the 1990s, which harassed Black and Latino men.
On Thursday, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch insisted that the new division was not a dragnet or part of a “zero tolerance” policing philosophy, but rather a response to complaints from elected officials and New Yorkers that the city feels unsafe.
Mayor Eric Adams said the initiative would take public safety “to the next level.”
“We will not tolerate an atmosphere where anything and everything goes,” he said during Thursday’s news conference. “We will not rest until we address the issues that have affected the lives of everyday New Yorkers.”
The new division, which Commissioner Tisch foreshadowed during her “State of the N.Y.P.D.” address in January, is an overhaul of the department’s approach to illegal street vending, homeless encampments, public urination and other low-level crimes.
Under the plan, the Police Department will appoint a chief to run the new division, who will report to the chief of department. Beginning on Monday, officers will be reassigned to the new teams and will respond to 311 reports and other low-level complaints in their precincts in conjunction with other city agencies. The officers have received specialized training to respond to the issues in their specific precincts, Commissioner Tisch said. The teams will each be supervised by a sergeant and guided by the precinct’s commanding officers.
After its pilot phase, the program will eventually expand to cover the entire city. That will require a reorganization of nearly 2,000 members of the Police Department, Commissioner Tisch said. The new division will oversee existing units, including teams that respond to homeless encampments.
It will also include “QStat,” a system to track quality-of-life complaints the same way that CompStat, the Police Department’s crime database, tracks criminal complaints.
“Today — and this may sound strange coming from the police commissioner — is not about crime,” Commissioner Tisch said during the news conference. “Today is about improving the quality of life for everyday New Yorkers in their neighborhoods, on their blocks and at their front doors.”
She added, “New Yorkers are frustrated and they’re pleading for help.”
The announcement came a week after the Police Department announced that nearly every major felony crime declined in the first three months of 2025. But even as the rate of violent crime improves, the police say that 311 complaints about quality-of-life issues have nearly doubled over the past six years.
The new plan will augment the Community Response Team, a unit established in 2022 to respond to residents’ concerns about quality-of-life issues related to more serious crimes. That unit, which has expanded significantly, has been criticized for a lack of transparency. In November, the city’s Department of Investigation released a report that found that the unit lacked a clear mission statement or written policies for selecting and training members.
Commissioner Tisch has insisted that the new division will act with discretion, but the plan has been strongly criticized by New Yorkers who worry that it is a return to the “broken windows” theory of policing, which holds that the best way to lower major crimes is to crack down on minor ones. That approach, embraced by Mayor Giuliani, resulted in the disproportionate targeting of Black and Latino men.
“There’s never been a study that proves that broken windows policing or quality-of-life policing is effective in reducing crime,” said Robert Gangi, the founder of the Police Reform Organizing Project, an watchdog organization. “The quality-of-life policing, one way or another, ends up targeting low-income people of color.”
Mr. Gangi added that there were less aggressive ways to address residents’ dissatisfaction over homeless encampments, illegal street vendors and other low-level offenses than by “using threats.”
On Thursday, Commissioner Tisch addressed the criticism head-on, calling the comparison to zero-tolerance policing “a complete mischaracterization.” She called the plan “a different policy for a different purpose,” and said that the new units would not have quotas to meet and that officers would be free to decide how best to respond to complaints.
“In 2025, quality-of-life enforcement is not about reducing more serious crimes,” she said, adding, “It’s about being responsive to actual community complaints.”
Tyron Pope, an adjunct associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said he thought the new teams could reduce crime, particularly as the city has been shaken by several shocking attacks in the subway and on the street, but only if they are deployed thoughtfully.
“Quality-of-life enforcement can be a force for good, but only if it’s done with care, humility and a deep commitment to justice itself,” said Mr. Pope, a former police sergeant who was part of an early community policing team in the 1990s.
He said the program should be paired with support from social workers and community services.
“It’s not about abandoning it; it’s about reimagining it,” Mr. Pope said.
