As our city begins to heal from the recent horrific shooting by a crazed gunman who claimed the lives of four innocent New Yorkers, including a beloved and highly respected police officer, Didarul Islam, we must recognize that our city is at a critical inflection point. In just three months, New Yorkers will head to the polls to cast their vote for the next Mayor of the City of New York in what will likely be the most consequential election in our city\u2019s history in the last fifty years. The results of this election will have a dramatic impact on every facet of our city and will shape the lives of millions of New Yorkers for years, if not decades.\u00a0 Standing before us is a choice between progress and regression. A choice between investing in public safety and defunding the police. A choice between governing based on pragmatism or progressivism. A choice between protecting the lives of every New Yorker in every neighborhood or putting those lives and communities in great danger. We\u2019ve been here, as a city, \u00a0before, but never before have we faced a threat so great as the one stemming from Zohran Mamdani\u2019s pledge to create a \u201cpolitical revolution\u201d as he boldly proclaims.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been said that \u201cwhat\u2019s past is prologue.\u201d In the wake of the senseless killing of one of New York\u2019s Finest, many people have begun reexamining the clear and unambiguous trail of vitriolic statements made by Mr. Mamdani that reveals not only his deeply rooted hatred for the men and women of law enforcement, but his clear disdain for law and order as well.\u00a0 Mamdani claims that it\u2019s unfair to hold him accountable for his past statements because they were made during a period of social unrest and as a good socialist, he was simply showing solidarity with those who have been allegedly wronged by our justice system. But New Yorkers should not be fooled by this false prophet, who suddenly sees the political expediency in walking those inflammatory statements back three months before the mayoral election.<\/p>\n
Instead of showering Mamdani with reverence and adulation because of the sweeping \u201cpie in the sky\u201d promises he makes that are not rooted in reality, New Yorkers need to pull back the curtain and ask him directly how he plans to carry out his agenda. What will his criteria be for appointing his commissioners? When large scale protests inevitably return to our city, will he stand up for the men and women in uniform risking their lives to maintain public safety or will he carry the same revolutionary flag as the agitators, who feed off of\u00a0chaos and disorder? How will he retain the mom-and-pop shops and bodega owners, who are already struggling to make ends meet, once his socialist government-owned grocery stores run them out of business? How will he attract major companies to invest in creating thousands of new jobs or ensure that our economy continues to attract tens of millions of tourists every year? How will he cut police overtime without bringing police staffing levels back to where we were over five years ago? How will his Department of Community Safety, with a price tag of over $300 million, successfully deploy so-called \u201cgun violence interrupters\u201d into gang infested neighborhoods and prevent gun violence without the police? How will eliminating the NYPD\u2019s highly trained Strategic Response Group help save lives in critical situations like the active shooting the entire world just witnessed?<\/p>\n
Every New Yorker who cares about their safety, their family\u2019s safety and the future of our city should hold Mamdani accountable to answering these critical questions, even as Mamdani attempts to evade accountability for his very clear and long-held political positions, which would have a catastrophic impact on our city if he\u2019s elected.<\/p>\n
We are moving in the right direction as a city because Mayor Adams understands that investing in public safety is central to the city\u2019s economy, its daily operations and its future. New York cannot afford to go backwards to the de Blasio area, where a left-wing, failed progressive political ideology trumped public safety.<\/p>\n
When Sergeants respond to emergencies, we don\u2019t ask the citizens who call on us what their political affiliations are. And by the same token, the next mayor of New York shouldn\u2019t allow his political affiliations to compromise public safety or undermine the men and women who maintain it.<\/p>\n
It shouldn\u2019t take a senseless mass killing to force New Yorkers to dig deep and realize what is at stake in this upcoming election. But when they do, they should look hard in the mirror and ask themselves if Mamdani\u2019s political revolution is one that our city can really afford?<\/p>\n
Vincent J. Vallelong is president of the New York City Sergeants Benevolent Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As our city begins to heal from the recent horrific shooting by a crazed gunman who claimed the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,3586,1269,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-142892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-op-ed","16":"tag-opinion","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}