NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani walks back defund police stance

New York Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani continues to walk past comments advocating for defunding the police, including at a National Night Out Against Crime event in the city on Tuesday night, but his opponent, Mayor Eric Adams, is not buying it.

“You can’t become pro-public safety when you decide to run for mayor. That just can’t happen,” Adams said on Wednesday during a press conference, accusing Mamdani of flip-flopping. 

“So are you just saying things to get elected, or are you saying things that you believe? Go look over my 30-year history, and you’ll see the consistency on what I want in this city around safety. Let’s not tinker with what’s working,” he continued.

MAMDANI’S ATTEMPTED POLICE PIVOT CONTINUES AFTER ADAMS ASKS ‘WHERE WAS HE?’

Mamdani has faced intense backlash following the 345 Park Avenue shooting last month in Manhattan, as five individuals, including the suspect and NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, were killed.

“I’ve said that since the beginning of the campaign, it is my belief, and whenever there have been tweets that have been cited from many years ago before I was an elected official, I’ve made very clear, as I said last week, that those are out of step with my positions as a candidate,” he told reporters at the event.

On the campaign trail, the Democrat maintains his stance that there should be a creation of a Department of Community Safety to deal with certain mental health-related emergency matters, as opposed to law enforcement. 

‘DAMAGE CONTROL’: MAMDANI’S ‘BLATANT FLIP-FLOP’ ON DEFUNDING POLICE RIPPED AS ‘POLITICAL THEATRE’

He reiterated his stance in a press conference with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Monday, saying that “forced overtime” is a main contributor to officers leaving the NYPD, and that he wants “to empower police officers to respond to serious crime and hire mental health professionals to respond to mental health calls.”

He touched on it during his remarks at Tuesday’s event as well, adding that “if we want our officers to be able to respond to the serious crimes that they signed up to join the department to address, then we must stop asking them to respond to nearly every single failure of the social safety net.”

“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti‑queer & a major threat to public safety,” he posted on June 28, 2020. “What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD. But your compromise uses budget tricks to keep as many cops as possible on the beat. NO to fake cuts – defund the police.”

“We need a socialist city council to defund the police,” he wrote on July 3, 2020.

MAMDANI DODGES RESPONSIBILITY FOR THREATS TO NYPD IN FIRST PRESSER SINCE DEADLY MANHATTAN SHOOTING

“City Council tried to make the NYPD reduce its overtime budget by half,” Mamdani posted on X in December 2020. “They simply refused. There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt. Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence.”

During his run for mayor, he changed his position from five years ago, including during a debate during the fiercely competitive Democratic primary.

“I will not defund the police. I will work with the police because I believe the police have a critical role to play in public service, public safety,” he said at the time.

Mamdani is in a closely watched race against Adams, who is a former police officer himself. In addition, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani, and Republican Curtis Sliwa is the Republican nominee in the Nov. 4 election.