New York City democrat socialist mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani told an audience of New York Police Department officers Tuesday night that he would, if elected, spare them from responding to most mental health calls, the Daily News reported.
Instead, Mamdani's public safety platform pitches the launch of a Department of Community Safety agency that would respond to mental health crises.
"We must stop asking them to respond to nearly every single failure of the social safety net," Mamdani said at Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza. "We must stop making it impossible for them to do their jobs by asking them to do every other job we can think of."
Mamdani made the remarks at a "National Night Out" event, the annual police community, bond-building event that takes place the first Tuesday of every August.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, himself a former NYPD captain, called Mamdani's plan "reckless" given the role mental health crises play in domestic violence.
"So when you put civilians in harm's way to respond to a domestic violence incident, that's irresponsible and it's reckless," Adams said Monday. Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa has said "women will die, children will die" under Mamdani's plan.
Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch also attended the event Tuesday. Mamdani would not commit to keeping Tisch in the role if he were elected in November.
"I'm appreciative of the work that's been done and still think that it's too early for me to make those commitments as I run for the general election," said Mamdani, who stood next to state Attorney General Letitia James.
Mamdani continues efforts to repair his image with law enforcement after a 2020 social media post of his surfaced referring to the NYPD as a "racist" and "anti-queer" entity posing a "major threat" to public safety. "What we need is to #DefundtheNYPD," Mamdani said in one post.
"I am looking forward to working with the rank-and-file of our police department, the union leadership that represents those same police officers," Mamdani said Tuesday. "And I've been clear throughout the entirety of the campaign, that I am not running to defund the police."
His public safety plan, released earlier this year, would eliminate the NYPD's overtime budget, and he was the only Democrat in the primary who would not increase the size of the police force.
Independent candidate and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed adding 5,000 officers to the NYPD force. Sliwa has said the force should be increased from 31,000 officers to 40,000. Adams, as mayor, unveiled a budget in April to increase the force by 1,000 cops by the fall of 2026.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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