Furhan Ahmad Releases Public Safety Plan For Ad66: Treatment Over Incarceration, Dangerousness Standard For Bail

Frontline first responder draws on 23 years as EMT, NYPD officer, and FDNY firefighter to lay out community-centered approach to public safety.

NEW YORK CITY, NY, UNITED STATES, May 20, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Furhan Ahmad, candidate for New York State Assembly District 66, today released his plan for public safety in Lower Manhattan, anchored in two commitments: a mental health response system that connects people to treatment and support instead of jail cells, and a targeted bail reform that gives judges the authority to weigh dangerousness in the narrow set of cases where public safety demands it.

Ahmad spent more than two decades responding to emergencies across New York City as an EMT, an NYPD officer, and an FDNY firefighter. He has been on the receiving end of 911 calls that were never police matters in the first place: a neighbor in a psychiatric crisis, a person sleeping rough in the cold, a family without anywhere else to turn.

"Every first responder in this city knows the truth: we are sending uniformed officers to solve problems that need a clinician, a caseworker, or a hospital bed," said Ahmad. "That fails the person in crisis, it fails the cops, and it fails the neighborhood. Lower Manhattan deserves a system built for what people actually need."

Mental Health Response and Community Policing
Ahmad's plan calls for the state to fund and expand mental health co-response and clinician-led response teams so that behavioral health calls are answered by trained professionals, with police backup only where genuinely required. The plan would direct sustained state investment into crisis stabilization beds, mobile treatment teams, and post-crisis case management so that people are connected to care rather than cycled through emergency rooms and arraignment courts. It also calls for restoring the kind of community policing that builds trust block by block: officers who know the precinct, the small business owners, the schoolyards, and the regulars at the corner deli.

A Targeted Dangerousness Standard
New York remains an outlier among states in barring judges from considering whether a defendant poses a danger to the public when setting pretrial conditions. Ahmad supports adding a narrowly drawn dangerousness standard, with clear statutory guardrails and judicial findings on the record, so that the small number of cases involving serious risk of violence can be handled with the seriousness they require, while preserving the core of bail reform for the vast majority of New Yorkers who should never have been jailed for being poor.

"I have felt the disappointment when a frightened domestic partner is let down by the system that releases a repeat abuser," said Ahmad. "And I have seen the system target and jail young people for small, petty crimes that ruined their futures. Both can be wrong. We can fix both."

Ahmad noted that the plan reflects his campaign's broader pillar of Human Dignity and Quality of Life, and connects to its Healthcare and Housing pillars, since stable housing and accessible care are the strongest forms of public safety.

Shivani Dhir
Furhan for Assembly
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