{"id":338357,"date":"2026-09-04T20:46:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T20:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/338357\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T20:46:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T20:46:18","slug":"houston-cops-praise-whitmire-while-throwing-shade-at-nycs-mamdani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/338357\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston cops praise Whitmire while throwing shade at NYC’s Mamdani"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Houston Police Officers’ Union is making sure Mayor John Whitmire<\/a> gets his flowers, while taking another shot<\/a> at New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a post Friday, HPOU highlighted Whitmire’s close relationship with Houston police officers before asking whether the NYPD could say the same about Mamdani.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Our Mayor comes to our roll calls, FOP meetings, goes on ridealongs, and actively participates with our officers in making Houston safer on a daily basis,” the caption read.<\/p>\n

“We love our Mayor and he loves Houston.”<\/p>\n

The post then asked: “Can NYPD say the same thing about their Mayor?” with Mamdani shown in the post sitting around a table with people in custody at a correctional facility.<\/p>\n

The union and Whitmire have always had a strong relationship, but back in April, it appeared (at least for a couple of days) that there might be trouble in paradise when HPOU said it would no longer endorse Whitmire over a city ordinance limiting HPD’s coordination with ICE.<\/p>\n

“I was blown away by that because originally he was with us and thought it was a horrible idea,” union president Douglas Griffith told Houston Public Media<\/a>. “All we want to do is go out and do our jobs as police officers. We don’t care about the politics. But then, when the mayor signed off on it, it blew me away\u2026And moving forward, I will not support them.”<\/p>\n

The apparent split proved short-lived.<\/p>\n

A couple of days later, Griffith walked back from his remarks<\/a> and in May, HPOU formally announced it would be endorsing Whitmire for reelection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mayor clarified the drama in a phone interview with Chron, noting there was never any true intention for HPOU to relinquish their longstanding support for Whitmire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The PAC never withdrew their support or even seriously considered it,” he told Chron. “There was no griping, just one person who was upset but hell, I had lunch with him two days ago.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

HPOU’s executive director Ray Hunt confirmed the mayor’s remarks over the phone saying the union as a whole has never withdrawn its endorsement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s also not the first time HPOU has gone after Mamdani. Back when he was first elected,<\/a> the union publicly tried to lure members of NYPD to move the Bayou City, posting a flyer on Facebook that read, “NYPD, are you disgusted with the election of Zohran Mamdani? Join us!”<\/p>\n

Regardless of how HPOU may have once viewed Whitmire, the mayor added that he continues to maintain a strong relationship with law enforcement and the Houston Fire Department due to their shared commitment to public safety and delivering on his campaign promises.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They’re very pleased with the police contract, the benefit package, and they know public safety is my highest priority,” he said. “I couldn’t be more pleased with our public safety initiatives. Crime numbers are going down, but we’re really just getting started.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

More News<\/p>\n

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| $9.5M of drugs found in trailer at Texas border crossing<\/a><\/p>\n

For the latest and best from Chron, sign up for our daily newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally published at Houston cops praise Whitmire while throwing shade at NYC’s Mamdani<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Police Officers’ Union is making sure Mayor John Whitmire gets his flowers, while taking another shot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[127073,18613,127072,127071,9,56,63,65,64,103,82],"class_list":["post-338357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-close-relationship","tag-houston-police","tag-hpou","tag-john-whitmire","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-nypd","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}