Retired NYPD Chief of Department John Chell tore into Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s plan to end homeless encampment sweeps, calling it a dangerous “gamble” that will fuel a “sharp rise” in shantytowns.
Mamdani on Thursday said he will end outgoing Mayor Eric Adams’ policy of clearing homeless encampments, dismissing the effort as a failure for “not connecting homeless New Yorkers to the housing that they so desperately need,” the New York Post reported.
Chell on Friday challenged the policy change while defending the Homeless Street Task Force that launched in 2022.
“It has addressed over 18,000 encampments citywide through coordinated outreach and enforcement. While not perfect, this effort has made a meaningful difference,” Chell said in a post on X.
“Under current law, you generally cannot force individuals into shelter — and the majority refuse services. Outreach does not automatically mean acceptance,” he wrote. “Ending street intervention programs before building sufficient housing, shelter, and treatment capacity is not a plan — it’s a gamble. Those resources must be created first and clearly codified.
“Otherwise, the predictable result will be a sharp rise in encampments, declining street conditions, and serious quality-of-life impacts across our neighborhoods,” Chell added.
More than 45,000 complaints for encampments have been reported so far in 2025, according to the Post.
“Rhetoric vs. Reality: We don’t have time for experiments,” Chell concluded his post.
Chell, a frequent guest on Newsmax, has warned against the radical-left policies of Mamdani, a democratic socialist, and the impact he will have on New York City. Last month, Chell told Newsmax that about 4,000 police officers are eligible to leave in January.
"I've been very vocal on the points that who he associates with, what his [Mamdani's] rhetoric has been, [is] well documented. ... But the policies he's looking to put in place by his own words are very disturbing, " Chell told Newsmax about Mamdani.
Mamdani once called the New York Police Department "racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety" and publicly supported "defunding" it.
As mayoral candidate in 2025, he recanted that slogan and proposed a $1 billion "Department of Community Safety" — a civilian agency that would redirect mental-health, homelessness and quality-of-life calls away from police and focus NYPD on violent crime prevention.
"In my opinion, he's not gonna hire more cops. He's just gonna divert some of their jobs to this community action team to do police work. It's not going to work, and people are going to leave,” Chell told Newsmax.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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