{"id":40687,"date":"2025-11-15T17:52:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T17:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/40687\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T17:52:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T17:52:07","slug":"exclusive-mamdani-taps-defund-the-police-champion-to-head-team-steering-his-transition-to-nyc-mayor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/40687\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive | Mamdani taps ‘Defund the Police’ champion to head team steering his transition to NYC mayor"},"content":{"rendered":"

NYC Mayor-elect Mayor Zohran Mamdani claimed on the campaign trail he no longer wants to \u201cdefund the police,\u201d<\/a> but a lefty political strategist he tapped to oversee his transition team is an impassioned supporter of the anti-cop movement.<\/p>\n

Elena Leopold,<\/a> executive director of an all-female transition team, was among the more than 230 past and present staffers of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio <\/a>who signed an June 2020 \u201copen letter\u201d to de Blasio demanding \u201cradical change\u201d on criminal justice policies \u2013 especially at the NYPD.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are demanding the mayor act immediately to \u2026 reduce the NYPD operating budget by $1 billion in Fiscal Year 2021, and reallocate that money to essential social services, including housing support and rental relief, food assistance and health care,\u201d wrote Leopold, a former senior advisor and campaign strategist for de Blasio, and the others.<\/p>\n

Leopold, who founded multiple political consulting firms with deep ties to lefty politicians since leaving City Hall, joined Mamdani\u2019s campaign as a chief advisor in June after he won the Democratic mayoral primary.<\/p>\n

The letter <\/a>\u2014 posted June 3, 2020<\/a> during the height on the Black Lives Matter protests \u2014 also demanded the city immediately fire and release names of cops who used \u201cexcessive force\u201d or covered their badge IDs during protests.<\/p>\n

NYC Mayor-elect Mayor Zohran Mamdani (left) claimed on the campaign trail he no longer wants to \u201cdefund the police,\u201d but Elena Leopold (right), the lefty political strategist he tapped to oversee his transition team is an impassioned supporter of the anti-cop movement. REUTERS<\/p>\n

It also called for creating a commission of \u201ccivil rights attorneys, journalists and activists, including abolition organizers,\u201d to investigate the Mayor\u2019s Office and NYPD\u2019s response to BLM riots that raged in NYC over the previous month.<\/p>\n

We are demanding radical change from the Mayor, who is on the brink of losing all legitimacy in the eyes of New Yorkers,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n

De Blasio initially refused to slash the NYPD budget after \u201cdefund the police\u201d became a rallying cry nationwide following the police-custody death of George Floyd in Minnesota.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, he ultimately\u00a0caved to the demands<\/a>\u00a0of activists and progressive Council members by signing off on a new city budget that, while not reducing the size of the police workforce, shifted nearly $1 billion from cops to social and youth services \u2014 despite the Big Apple in 2020 seeing a 41% hike in killings.<\/p>\n

Mamdani speaks in front of the iconic Queens Unisphere Wednesday alongside his transition team. AP<\/p>\n

Mamdani, then campaigning for his current Queens assembly seat, wasn\u2019t satisfied and accused the mayor and Council of using \u201cbudget tricks to keep as many cops as possible on the beat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD,\u201d he posted on X <\/a>on June 28, 2020.<\/p>\n

But in July Mamdani backed off the controversial stance in the wake of a Midtown mass shooting that left four dead, including an NYPD officer, while he was celebrating his recent nuptials in his native Uganda.<\/p>\n

Leopold (right) in 2015 leaving the state Capitol with then-NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio. Hans Pennink<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not running to defund the police,\u201d insisted Mamdani, hours after visiting slain cop Didarul Islam\u2019s grieving relatives.<\/p>\n

Council Minority Leader Joann Ariola said Mamdani\u2019s decision to appoint Leopold to the transition team shows he hasn\u2019t completely abandoned the idea of slashing NYPD spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cAm I surprised? Not one bit,\u201d said the Queens Republican. \u201cWhat Mr. Mamdani says when he\u2019s pandering to a crowd, and what he actually hopes to do, I believe, are very different things.<\/p>\n

Leopold was one of 236 past and present de Blasio staffers who wrote an \u201copen letter\u201d to the then-mayor demanding he \u201cdefund\u201d $1 billion from the NYPD. REUTERS<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen him make statements that go from progressive to moderate to almost conservative, depending on who he\u2019s talking to. \u2026 Well, we see who his friends are, and they\u2019re the same people who want to dismantle public safety in this city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councilman Frank Morano (R-Staten Island) said he\u2019s \u201cready to work with the mayor-elect\u2019s team\u201d but is \u201cconcerned about the direction this signals for policing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leopold will oversee a transition team with deep ties to City Hall: former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer and city budget expert Melanie Hartzog, along with ex-Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and nonprofit president Grace Bonilla.<\/p>\n

Mamdani spokeswoman Dora Pekec declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NYC Mayor-elect Mayor Zohran Mamdani claimed on the campaign trail he no longer wants to \u201cdefund the police,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9894,13243,7739,57,9,56,63,65,64,103,104,23576,58,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-40687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-bill-de-blasio","9":"tag-black-lives-matter","10":"tag-budget","11":"tag-metro","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-nyc-headlines","16":"tag-nyc-news","17":"tag-nypd","18":"tag-police","19":"tag-the-de-blasio-transition","20":"tag-us-news","21":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40687","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=40687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}