WATCH: Strategies for a New Era of Policing and Public Safety in NYC
By Carla Sinclair, Communications Project Director
In March 2026, the CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance partnered with the CUNY Graduate Center to convene leading researchers and practitioners to discuss how the police can use everyday interactions to both strengthen trust with the community and enhance public safety.
Every day, the NYPD has thousands of interactions with New Yorkers. When handled well, these encounters can strengthen trust and enhance public safety; when they are not, they can erode confidence and cause lasting harm.
In early March, CUNY ISLG partnered with the CUNY Graduate Center to bring together leading researchers and practitioners to examine what the evidence shows about improving police–community interactions across key areas of policy and practice.
“These retail interactions between police and public are critical ingredients in creating trust and respect for the police and arguably for the government itself,” ISLG Senior Fellow Jeremy Travis, who moderated the event, prefaced. “How are these interactions handled by the police? How can they be improved? Which issues should be handled by someone other than the police? At the outset of a new mayoral administration, answers to these questions could signal a new day in this critical relationship between police and New Yorkers.”
“These retail interactions between police and public are critical ingredients in creating trust and respect for the police and arguably for the government itself.”
- Jeremy Travis, ISLG Senior Fellow
Moderated by Travis, the discussion featured ISLG Research Project Director Kathleen Doherty on the constitutional and real-world impacts of pedestrian stops in the wake of New York City’s landmark stop-and-frisk ruling; Brandon del Pozo, assistant professor at Brown University and former NYPD commanding officer and Burlington police chief, on law enforcement responses to substance use; Ayesha Delany-Brumsey, clinical psychologist and director at NYC Health + Hospitals, on non-police responses to mental health crises; and Tracey Meares, professor at Yale Law School and nationally recognized expert on procedural justice and police legitimacy.
Watch the full event below or on YouTube.
Photo by Carla Sinclair.