New York
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Zohran Mamdani spent the last hours of his wedding celebration in Uganda huddled remotely with his team after learning of New York’s deadliest mass shooting of the last 25 years.
He returned this week to the biggest political test he’s faced since pulling off a stunning victory in the June 24 Democratic primary: Honoring the deaths of Officer Didarul Islam and three others while addressing his past calls to defund the police department he hopes to oversee as mayor if he wins the November election.
“I am not defunding the police. I am not running to defund the police,” Mamdani told reporters Wednesday after meeting with Islam’s family. He described himself as a “candidate who is not fixed in time, one that learns and one that leads, and part of that means admitting as I have grown.”
Mamdani and other mayoral candidates are expected to attend Islam’s funeral on Thursday, three days after Islam was shot and killed this week when a man carrying an assault rifle walked into the lobby of a Manhattan office high-rise and opened fire. The gunman eventually turned the gun on himself.
Mamdani says he does not plan on defunding the New York Police Department or decreasing its headcount if elected in November. Instead, he has proposed creating a “Department of Community Safety” that would respond to some emergencies, including incidents involving people experiencing mental health crises. Mamdani has also said he wants to reduce the NYPD’s overtime budget and ensure that officers are focused on the most serious crimes.
But he has a long string of past comments criticizing law enforcement and saying the NYPD should be defunded.
In one June 2020 post on X, Mamdani wrote: “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.”
Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, both running as independents in the November election, have suggested Monday’s shooting proved a need to focus on public safety and increase police. Adams and Cuomo have suggested Mamdani would put public safety at risk because of his previous calls to change how the NYPD operates.
As Mamdani was making his way back to the city Tuesday, Cuomo and Adams pounced on the opportunity to highlight their rival’s statements.
“Literally he has said he was part of this ‘defund the police’ movement,” Cuomo said Tuesday during an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt. “It really is a reality check for all this political theory and political hype that we have going on in this country with the extreme left postulating these theories that have no connection to reality.”
Mamdani’s initial response to the shooting came shortly after it began with a post on social media, which was quickly seized on by opponents and critics pointing to his previous criticism of the NYPD, his calls to defund the police in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and his promise to disband an elite unit within the NYPD known as the Strategic Response Group.
Asked about the comments Wednesday, Mamdani distanced himself from previous statements where he was critical of police, saying he was expressing a frustration shared with many New Yorkers in the aftermath of Floyd’s death, adding he believes New Yorkers should not have to choose between safety and justice.
“Despite what others may say, my vision is not to defund the police. It is in fact to allow those officers to respond to the serious crimes that many of them signed up to address,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani was also critical of Cuomo, accusing him politicizing the tragedy to speak about his prior social media posts rather than focusing on the victims.
“Andrew Cuomo is far more comfortable living his life in the past and attacking tweets of 2020 than running against the campaign that we have been leading for the last eight months,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani is expected to attend Islam’s funeral on Thursday after being asked to attend by the family.
“I had called them in advance to ask if that was something that I could do. They had welcomed me into their home,” Mamdani said. “They refused to let me leave until I had breakfast with them. They are an embodiment of so much of what makes this city the one that we love.”
Police funerals in recent years have attracted political commentary and dissent. In 2022, the widow of NYPD officer Jason Rivera, who was killed along with his partner in the line of duty, excoriated Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg during her eulogy, accusing him of being soft on crime.
And a decade ago, thousands of police officers at the funerals for officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos turned their backs towards then Mayor Bill de Blasio who was elected on a promise to reform the NYPD. The moment marked a turning point in his mayoralty.
Mamdani, running to be the city’s first Muslim mayor, has connections to the city’s Bangladeshi population and received overwhelming support from the city’s South Asian communities.
