Meet the Controversial New Deputy of Community Safety: Former Leader of Soros-Backed Abolitionist Group

The Post has uncovered that Mayor Mamdani’s recent appointee for deputy mayor of community safety has a controversial background. Renita Francois, known for her critical stance on traditional policing, previously led a lobbying group funded by George Soros that advocated for defunding the police and dismantling jails.

Francois has been appointed to a high-profile role with an annual salary of $290,000. She will spearhead the mayor’s “Office of Community Safety,” a new initiative aimed at transforming the NYPD’s approach to handling 911 calls.

At 42, Francois brings experience from her recent position as chief program officer at Beyond Impact, a West Hollywood-based organization. This group is known for its progressive agendas, including the “Dream Defenders” program, which identifies as a black-led, feminist, socialist, abolitionist, and internationalist movement advocating for a society free of prisons, police, capitalism, and imperialism.

Another significant initiative under her former organization is the “Movement for Black Lives Action.” This group endorses the “Defund the Police” movement, calls for the abolition of prisons, and supports reparations for the descendants of enslaved people. It also strives for “electoral justice” to ensure better representation for Black communities in government, as stated on its website.

Beyond Impact, which underwent a rebranding in February after being known as “Tides Advocacy,” has received over $51 million in the past decade from Soros’ Open Society Foundation, a network recognized for its progressive grant-making, according to financial records.

Beyond Impact – which was rebranded in February after previously being named “Tides Advocacy”— and other offshoots of the Tides Network have received more than $51 million over the past decade from Soros’ hard-left grant-making network Open Society Foundation, records show.

More than $35 million went directly to Beyond Impact and was predominately spent backing initiatives that tried influencing elections and supported so-called criminal-justice reforms, like cashless bail.

Soros typically tries to keep a low profile, exerting influence by donating under the radar to lefty candidates — including former President Joe Biden soft-on crime district attorneys across the United States like Manhattan’s Alvin— and funneling money to liberal causes and groups.

Open Society Foundations and related nonprofits he founded have doled out more than $32 billion worldwide since 1984, according to its website.

Francois — who earned degrees at arch-liberal University of California, Berkeley and Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management — has no experience in law enforcement, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She joined the nonprofit in 2022 after spending the previous seven years working for far-left former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio as a top honcho in the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and oversaw its neighborhood safety action plan.

In her new City Hall role, she will oversee an Orwellian-titled office with just one other staffer — and a $260 million budget.

Her main goal will be figuring how best to shift responsibility for “nonviolent” 911 mental-health-emergency calls from the NYPD to social workers and other civilian responders.

The new office will also house existing city programs, including ones to combat hate crimes, reduce shootings through violence interrupters, and provide services to sexual assault victims.

Law enforcement experts, however, are questioning whether emergency response times will rise because dispatchers might have to spend extra time deciding whether cops should be sent on calls involving the mentally ill.

“I don’t want to predict this, but with my experience I think it’s just going to go very bad quickly if there’s confusion,” said retired NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who served in the NYPD for three decades before retiring in 2019.

“I think [the new office] shows a little bit of naiveness on the part of the mayor here. . . . This administration’s trying to reinvent the wheel,” he added.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch raised serious questions about whether the office is even necessary, while testifying under oath last week during a City Council hearing.

She estimated only about 2% of calls for service would be removed from her department’s jurisdiction and diverted to the new office, citing 2024 figures showing nearly 86,000 of the 4.3 million received that year were nonviolent mental health calls.

“I believe that you need to send the police when there’s a call for a violent person,” she said.

Critics say the new office is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars and that Mamdani is vastly understating the number of calls requiring a police response.

“This entire agency is just a $260 million boondoggle to fill a campaign promise and find new ways to keep dangerous criminals out of jail,” Council Minority Leader David Carr (R-Staten Island) said.

“In that regard, it appears the mayor found the right person for the job: an activist who ran a Soros-funded organization that advocates defunding police and abolishing prisons.”

In 2024, Beyond Impact reported $92.5 million in revenues accumulated predominately through donations, but was still $612,715 in the red, according to its latest available tax filings.

The nonprofit’s main expenses included $22.4 million for salaries, with Francois pocketing $184,955 in base salary and “other compensation.”

The group also doled out $16.8 million for “political campaign activity” to boost lefty candidates and causes.

Key benefactors included the Working Families Party, which got $937,000; Make the Road Action, which received $450,000, and other groups also backed by Soros — whose get-out-the-vote groundwork played a pivotal role in helping Mamdani upset ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in last year’s Democratic mayoral primary.

The Mayor’s Office defended the new office, saying it will free up police officers to respond to crimes more quickly and actually improve emergency response times that soared the previous four years under former Mayor Eric Adams.

“The Office of Community Safety will both prevent violence before it happens and ensure that when New Yorkers are in crisis, they receive the right response, at the right time, from the right people,” added Mamdani spokesman Sam Raskin.

“We’re building something better: a coordinated, citywide system that sends mental health professionals and civilian responders to nonviolent emergencies, while allowing police to focus on the work they are trained to do.”

Francois did not return messages.

The deputy mayor told NY1 on Wednesday she understands it might “be a little bit scary for some people” to see civilians rather than cops respond to 911 calls, but the administration is committed to the new “compassionate-first approach.”

“We don’t want to lead with fear. We want to lead with hope,” she said.

Critics such as Carr aren’t buying the “compassionate” veneer.

“New York City already has an Office of Community Safety — it’s called the NYPD. Just stay out of the way and let them do their job,” he said.