Democratic nominee and Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani says he will apologize for his past social media posts calling the NYPD racist.
Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Democratic mayoral nominee and frontrunner Zohran Mamdani will apologize for a 2020 social media post in which he called the NYPD “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety,” his campaign confirmed to amNewYork.
Mamdani’s apparent shift on his past comments — he first revealed this in a Thursday interview with The New York Times — comes after he previously said those comments were “out of step” with his mayoral bid but stopped short of formally apologizing for them.
It demonstrates an apparent effort by Mamdani — a democratic socialist Queens Assembly member — to moderate his once much further-left views on policing as he vies against a crowded field of challengers in the Nov. 4 general election. Those opponents — particularly independents former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams — have made much hay out of Mamdani’s past criticisms of the NYPD to paint him as ill equipped to lead the department.
Mamdani’s campaign confirmed his comments to The Times.
The lawmaker told the outlet that he made the social media post “at the height of frustration” in the weeks following George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. When asked twice by a reporter if he would apologize for those comments, he said “yes.”
However, it is unclear if Mamdani would make such an apology during his campaign or after, if he were to win the election.
Throughout his campaign, Mamdani has also repeatedly said he no longer supports the “defund the police” movement he once embraced.
“To be very clear, as I have been over the course of this campaign, I’m not defunding the police, I’m not running to defund the police,” he said in July.
Tepid approval from police union
The Assembly member’s public safety plan calls for sustaining the NYPD’s current budget for a headcount of 35,000 — though the department was about 1,261 officers short of that number as of August. He also intends to create a separate Department of Community Safety that would have non-police personnel respond to a variety of mental health-related matters instead of cops.
Mamdani’s remarks did receive some tepid approval from Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, the NYPD’s largest rank-and-file union. But the union boss also signaled that Mamdani must do more to demonstrate his commitment to improving NYPD officers’ working conditions.
“Words of support are important, but they need to be backed up with action,” Hendry said. “We need elected leaders who not only support cops on the campaign trail, but who will work with us every single day to improve our safety, quality of life, and compensation as we protect New York City.”
Cuomo, however, charged in a Friday statement that Mamdani’s moderation on policing is part of a flip-flopping pattern on past controversial positions.
“For weeks, Zohran Mamdani has been ducking, dodging, and rewriting his own record,” Cuomo said. “New Yorkers deserve straight answers. These are not ‘gotcha’ questions, nor are they — as Mamdani now says — ‘a mythical version’ of him — they are his own words, his own positions, and his own record. Until he gives clear, honest responses, voters are left with just one question of their own: Who is Zohran Mamdani, and what does he stand for?”
Cuomo is second to Mamdani in the polls, though he is trailing the Democratic nominee by double digits. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and Adams are polling behind Cuomo.
In addition to public safety, Cuomo dinged Mamdani for distancing himself from the platform that the national Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) released last month. The platform includes proposals many see as radical, such as eliminating all misdemeanor offenses and closing all local jails.
In response, Mamdani’s spokesperson Dora Pekec insisted that he has only changed his stance on policing and on the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which he now discourages after initially declining to condemn it.
Mamdani maintains that he has never used the phrase — seen by many as an incitement to violence against Jewish people — himself.