{"id":77300,"date":"2025-12-21T19:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T19:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/77300\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T19:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T19:12:07","slug":"trumps-feds-can-end-run-zohran-mamdani-and-fight-nyc-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/77300\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s feds can end-run Zohran Mamdani \u2014 and fight NYC crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Jan. 1, Zohran \u201cnature is healing\u201d Mamdani<\/a> takes over at City Hall \u2014 and many New Yorkers remain anxious about what his mayoralty will mean for public safety.<\/p>\n

Their well-founded worry stems from Mamdani\u2019s troubling record of rank hostility toward the NYPD<\/a>, toward the use of jails and prisons<\/a>, and toward maintaining basic public order<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s compounded their concerns by staffing his transition team<\/a> with people like police abolitionist Alex Vitale and convicted armed robber Mysonne Linen<\/a>, who have also expressed extreme hostility toward the city\u2019s criminal-justice system.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s left many New Yorkers asking, \u201cWhat can be done?\u201d<\/p>\n

Enter Jay Clayton<\/a>, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.<\/p>\n

Clayton took a well-deserved victory lap last week after leading efforts to crack down on Manhattan open-air drug markets.<\/p>\n

His efforts reveal how the federal government can marshal its considerable resources<\/a> to block some of the damage Mamdani could do to New York\u2019s public safety infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Clayton recently told The Post about how his office is battling the worst types of street crime \u2014 drugs, guns and gangs.<\/p>\n

That could help counter some of Mamdani\u2019s dangerous campaign promises, like abolishing the city\u2019s gang database and halting homeless-encampment sweeps.<\/p>\n

Because federal authorities have concurrent jurisdiction over certain types of offenses \u2014 particularly drug trafficking, gun violations and organized-crime rings \u2014 they can pick up some of the slack in cities with intransigent leaders who can\u2019t be trusted to enforce the law.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen this movie before.<\/p>\n

When Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez pushed diversion programs<\/a> over jail for gun offenders in 2020, the US Attorney\u2019s office for the Eastern District began prosecuting more of those gun cases itself.<\/p>\n

The Eastern District of Pennsylvania did the same in response to the soft-on-crime policies of Larry Krasner, Philadelphia\u2019s local Soros DA.<\/p>\n

And in Tennessee, President Donald Trump\u2019s Memphis Safe Task Force has upped the ante on enforcement<\/a> \u2014 making more than 4,000 arrests since its September launch \u2014 in the notoriously dangerous city whose DA, Steve Mullroy, has been roundly criticized by Republicans for his decarceral agenda.<\/p>\n

When Mamdani takes office, federal law-enforcement authorities should have a plan for plugging the holes that the new mayor could poke in the city\u2019s public safety landscape.<\/p>\n

In doing so, they should prioritize prosecuting more gun and drug cases involving individual offenders \u2014 ideally with the help of NYPD intelligence-sharing, if Mamdani allows it.<\/p>\n

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The NYPD has a good idea of who the riskiest local offenders are, and flagging those cases for the feds could directly reduce crime by getting dangerous recidivists off the streets.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because federal prosecutors don\u2019t have to clear the absurd hurdles of New York state\u2019s misguidedly reformed bail and discovery laws<\/a>, meaning their cases are less likely to be thrown out and defendants are more likely to be held in pretrial detention.<\/p>\n

To maximize their impact, federal authorities should also make gang-takedown prosecutions a top priority \u2014 especially if Mamdani follows through on his insane promise to abolish the city\u2019s gang database.<\/p>\n

Rigorous research demonstrates just how big the impact can be.<\/p>\n

One study of gang-takedown prosecutions in the city found that \u201cgun violence in and around public housing communities fell by approximately one third in the first year after a gang takedown\u201d \u2014 a huge drop.<\/p>\n

Much of Gotham\u2019s most serious criminal violence has a nexus to the city\u2019s gangs, which is why this strategy has been so effective here.<\/p>\n

Of course, the federal government\u2019s capacity to pick up the law-enforcement slack in New York is limited.<\/p>\n

Gov. Kathy Hochul, therefore, should look for ways to augment Clayton\u2019s efforts with the large, well-funded New York State Police force she has at her command.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s deploying troopers to form a state Strategic Response Group or maintaining a state-level gang database, the governor should work to limit the damage Mamdani can do to the country\u2019s largest and greatest city.<\/p>\n

The fight against crime and disorder should by all rights be led by City Hall \u2014 but that ship has (temporarily, we hope) sailed.<\/p>\n

The battle isn\u2019t lost yet, though: Responsible leaders, in Albany and especially in Washington, DC, can do much to keep the city from descending into criminal chaos.<\/p>\n

So, Mr. President: Will you give us a hand?<\/p>\n

Rafael A. Mangual is the Nick Ohnell fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book \u201cCriminal (In)Justice.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Jan. 1, Zohran \u201cnature is healing\u201d Mamdani takes over at City Hall \u2014 and many New Yorkers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[153,426,9,56,63,65,64,103,299,23699,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-77300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-kathy-hochul","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-ny","12":"tag-nyc","13":"tag-nyc-headlines","14":"tag-nyc-news","15":"tag-nypd","16":"tag-opinion","17":"tag-us-attorney","18":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77300","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=77300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}