Police officers are leaving the New York Police Department in record numbers, and union officials say the situation could get worse if self-labeled democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani wins the mayoral election, said retired NYPD detective Bo Dietl.
The entire situation "is all an offshoot from 2020, when they had the George Floyd riots and how the cops were treated right back then and how the distaste for police officers all came about," Dietl told Newsmax's "Finnerty."
"And then I got to go back to cellphones because this is what goes online. This is how the hatred develops.
"If someone comes up to a cop, smacks him in the face, and someone's recording it, they'll record the second half with the cop trying to arrest the guy. Then you have cities like New York City that has the city council can't put a headlock on. I used to use it 100 times. Nobody dies. Diaphragm law. You got to put handcuffs on someone, but you can't touch them," he said.
"Then the big one to me was if you're doing your job, you still could get sued civilly. So if you got a little house out in Levittown, New York, well, this goes across the board. I mean, we're lucky that some states like Florida and Texas are not this way, but California's over with.
"We've seen it. And now what you have is a city council. You have a state senate. You have an assembly that just with this bail reform," Dietl said.
"There was two cops that were one cop was beat up by two guys, stitches; 19 times it came to court. They keep postponing it — the DAs, even the judges. When you have these liberal judges, they're not doing their jobs," he added.
Mamdani has called the NYPD "wicked and corrupt" on social media and has also called for the department to be dismantled.
"All this misery. All for money. In the last budget, the City Council tried to make the NYPD reduce its overtime budget by half. They simply refused," he posted on X in 2020.
"There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked and corrupt. Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence."
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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