Zohran Mamdani Puts Convicted Armed Robber Mysonne Linen In Charge Of Criminal Justice Reform

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani named ex-rapper Mysonne Linen — who served seven years in state prison for armed robbery — to his transition team’s criminal legal system committee.

Linen, 49, was convicted in 1999 of two Bronx taxi stickups from the late 1990s and later reinvented himself as an activist. Mamdani’s committee roster lists him (misspelled as “Mysoone”) among the appointees. (RELATED: ‘Natural Enemy’: Mamdani Names Radical Cop-Hating Professor To ‘Community Safety’ Post)

Linen, whose debut album was slated for release on Def Jam before his conviction, has spent recent years in criminal justice advocacy and gun violence prevention. He celebrated the appointment on Instagram last month, writing: “We are building something different.”

Mamdani’s transition site shows 17 committees, including the “Committee on the Criminal Legal System,” which is set to offer both personnel and policy recommendations as he prepares to take office next month.

Mamdani’s crime plan centers on creating a $1.1 billion “Department of Community Safety” to shift non-violent and mental-health calls away from police and into civilian teams, while keeping NYPD headcount roughly flat.

He’s also vowed to halt NYPD-led encampment sweeps and replace them with outreach that connects homeless New Yorkers to housing, arguing the current approach “push[es] New Yorkers who are living in the cold to another place where they will live in the cold,” according to CBS News.

On jails, Mamdani says he’ll drive down the population so the city can close Rikers and follow through on borough-based jails — a plan he’s said the outgoing administration made “functionally impossible” on the 2027 timetable, Spectrum News NY1 reported. He previously urged city jail overseers to “truly and fully end solitary confinement,” signing a 2021 letter after an unannounced Rikers visit.