New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani received blowback on Thursday for killing a headline-grabbing ploy by former Mayor Eric Adams to hire thousands of extra police officers.
Even though his predecessor’s plan was seen as a reach by many, the new mayor is still taking heat for not finding a solution to the NYPD’s brain drain.
Adams takes Mamdani to task
The so-called “thin blue line” has been put on a diet by Mamdani, after he refused to fund Adams’ end-of-term scheme to hire 5,000 new officers. A number of officials slammed Mamdani for it, including Adams, who called it “a serious mistake.”
“Five thousand officers is not excess. It is necessary to stabilize the force, reduce crushing overtime, and ensure the health, safety, and well-being of every New Yorker,” the former mayor said through spokesman Todd Shapiro.
Adams’ plan would have increased the NYPD headcount to 40,000, which was last seen during Rudy Giuliani’s tenure as mayor, which ran from the start of 1994 until the end of 2001. However, Mamdani has bigger problems, like officers leaving the NYPD in droves. There are a little more than 34,000 officers on the beat, about 1,000 fewer than the budgeted headcount.
“My message is, right now, we need to keep our police officers in the department. We are losing 250 to 300 a month. That needs to change right away,” Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said.
Mamdani again touts Department of Community Safety Â
CBS News New York’s Marcia Kramer put the question to Mamdani.
“What are you going to do to try to convince people that they want to work in New York City as a police officer?” she asked.
He fell back on his campaign agenda of establishing a Department of Community Safety to relieve police workloads by having civilians respond to things like homelessness and domestic violence cases.
“I’ve said time and again that for too long the city has added additional responsibilities onto the NYPD. We see at this point the NYPD responsible for responding to about 200,000 mental health calls a year,” Mamdani said.
However, Hendry said that’s not the solution.
“It’s not going to change anything for the NYPD. We still have a huge workload. This is only 2% of our workload, mental health jobs. We need to keep police officers in this department,” Hendry said.
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