Andrew Cuomo went in on Zohran Mamdani during Thursday’s mayoral debate over the socialist front-runner’s past comments about the NYPD, including calling the department “racist” and a “threat to public safety.”
“Respect the police. They’re not racists,” Cuomo shot. “As the assemblyman calls them, they’re not a threat to public safety. As he says, they’re not anti queer. They are here to protect New Yorkers.
Mamdani tried to brush the comments off as old.
Cuomo said repeatedly to respect the police. via REUTERS
“I have been clear time and time again that as much as Andrew Cuomo wants to bring up tweets from 2020, which is around the same time that he was sending seniors to their deaths in nursing homes, I am looking to work with police officers, not to defund the NYPD.”
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Mamdani found himself in a political firestorm after his social media posts emerged from 2020 when he called the NYPD racist and a threat to public safety.
The Queens state assemblyman poured gasoline on the issue during an interview with The New York Times last month after saying that he believed he should apologize for the statements, but bizarrely did not say sorry.
Mamdani tried to brush off his old comments. AP
For weeks, he was pressed on how he would offer up his apology, but only issued a long-winded word salad, claiming to try to say sorry to each and every officer on the force behind closed doors.
On Wednesday, though, Mamdani finally issued a broad public apology during a Fox News interview.
But the proud Democratic Socialists of America member, standing on stage during the debate at 30 Rockefeller Center, stuck to his guns when it came to kneecapping the police commissioner on disciplinary matters.
Mamdani said he thinks the Civilian Complaint Review Board should be the final say in discipline, saying it would take politics out of the process.
“What I’ve said is that I think it’s time to remove much of the politics out of the question of accountability,” he said.
“And oftentimes those recommendations are then subject to political pressures and not followed through on. I think New Yorkers deserve a system where they know it will then be assessed once again, that there’s actually more to the recommendation.”
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The CCRB is a 15-person board, made up of political appointees on three-year terms. The mayor has five picks on the board alone.