NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist leading the race for New York mayor, tried to distance himself from past criticism of the NYPD, two days after a mass shooting at a midtown office building left five people dead, including a police officer.
Mamdani, speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday after returning from a 10-day trip to Uganda, described some past social media posts criticizing the New York Police Department as "out of step" with his current thinking.
"I'm not defunding the police," Mamdani said. "I'm not running to defund the police."
The attack, the deadliest mass shooting in the city in more than 25 years, horrified New Yorkers and reframed attention on Mamdani's past statements about the police force, less than four months before he competes in the general election as the Democratic nominee.
In the wake of the social justice protests after George Floyd's murder in 2020, Mamdani, 33, repeatedly called for defunding the police. In a social media post from that year, one of several he made criticizing the department, Mamdani said the NYPD was "racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety."
Mamdani, who leads the five-candidate field by significant margins in recent polls, has since moderated that position, saying he no longer supports defunding.
But the shooting highlights what some of Mamdani's critics have said is his weakness on public safety.
His platform calls for drastically reducing the NYPD's overtime budget and would eliminate the department's Strategic Response Group, a small unit created in 2015 that responds to fast-moving incidents like Monday's rampage at 345 Park Ave. On Wednesday, he reiterated that call, expressing concern about how the group is employed during protests.
And unlike some of his rivals in the general election, Mamdani, wants to keep the NYPD's headcount at current levels, rather than hiring more officers.
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani by double digits in the June Democratic primary and is running on a third-party line, said the shooting demonstrates his rival's weakness on policing.
"Who's going to apply to be a police officer when that's what the mayor thinks of them?" Cuomo said in an interview this week with the Daily News.
Cuomo has said he would hire 5,000 more police officers, while incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is also running as an independent, has said he plans to fill 2,400 vacant positions within the NYPD.
The shooting also focused attention on the question of whether or not Mamdani, if elected, would ask NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to remain as part of his administration. Mamdani has said he would consider keeping Tisch as commissioner but hasn't committed to it. Mamdani said Wednesday he spoke briefly with Tisch after the shooting, and praised the NYPD's handling of the response.
The press conference Wednesday came just hours after Mamdani returned from the trip to Uganda, where he was born. Mamdani's first stop after returning to the country was a visit to slain NYPD officer Didarul Islam's home, at the officer's family's invitation. Mamdani said he plans to attend Islam's funeral on Thursday, after being invited by the officer's family.
He said voters shouldn't focus on his past statements.
"I am running 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. And part of that means focusing on the people who deserve to be spoken about."
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