Mamdani runs away from past anti-cop rhetoric in wake of deadly NYC shooting

NEW YORK — New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday he is not an anti-cop politician who wants to defund the police, and that his past rhetoric denouncing law enforcement on social media is not where he stands today.

Mr. Mamdani, the race’s leading candidate, was peppered with questions by reporters about his previous social media comments denouncing the New York Police Department, in the wake of a shooting at a midtown Park Avenue commercial building Monday that left four people dead, including an NYPD officer.

His opponents, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Eric Adams and radio host Curtis Sliwa, are criticizing Mr. Mamdani for his past statements and question whether he can garner the trust of the NYPD if he becomes mayor.

The New York Assemblyman had just returned from an 11-day vacation in Uganda and found himself facing his first crisis, attributed to his past condemnation about the NYPD and the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis law enforcement officers in 2020.

Asked if he regretted some of his harshest statements about the NYPD, Mr. Mamdani said, “My statements in 2020 were ones made amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers held at the murder of George Floyd and the inability to deliver on what Eric Adams, of all people, described as the right for all of us to be able to enjoy safety and justice, that we need not choose between the two.”

The democratic socialist assemblyman had proposed to dismantle an elite NYPD task force that rushed into a Park Avenue building during Monday’s deadly assault if he becomes mayor.

“As mayor, I will disband the SRG, which has cost taxpayers millions in lawsuit settlements and brutalized countless New Yorkers exercising their First Amendment rights,” he wrote two months after declaring his candidacy for mayor.

When asked about whether he would still disband the task force, he said the SRG is supposed to be deployed for emergency situations like the shooting on Park Avenue, but not used as a primary means to respond to acts of protests around the city.

During the defund the police movement in 2020, Mr. Mamdani made several online posts calling for reducing the NYPD’s budget.

“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD,” he wrote on X at the time.

“There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt,” he wrote, referencing city budget negotiations around proposed cuts to the NYPD. “Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence.”

Mr. Mamdani said his views on policing based on tweets from five years ago “are clearly out of step with the vision that I have with the statements that I have put forward.”

He said that reducing police overtime pay, which is part of his platform, is not an example of defunding the police.

“Calling for a reduction in overtime is a call that nearly every candidate has made over the course of this campaign, and even Mayor Adams ran on in 2021,” he said.

Mr. Mamdani also suggested hate crimes and several other offenses should not be the NYPD’s responsibility for policing. Instead, he suggested they be dealt with by a Department of Community Safety, to make it easier for officers to respond to more serious crimes.

Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, responded, “Soooo …. Hate crimes should be handled by his super social workers. What?!”

Mr. Azzopardi later added, “I liken that to every time there is a mass shooting, Republicans say it’s not the time to talk gun safety. This is very much the time to talk about our candidates for mayor’s views on public safety.”