https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/nyregion/mamdani-police-apology-floyd.html
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, said on Thursday that he intended to apologize for comments he made in 2020 calling the New York Police Department “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”
He said that the remarks, which he wrote in June 2020 in a social media post in support of the defund the police movement, were made after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis a month earlier.
The comments were made “at the height of frustration,” he said in an interview with The New York Times, and were not reflective of his current campaign or “my view of public safety and the fact that police will be critical partners in delivering public safety.”
But it’s only “pragmatic” because there are non-leftist voters who might throw him out for saying “cops are racist”.
That’s not the calculus here. The problem is that the NYPD has a budget larger than the DPRK’s entire military including their nuclear program. The NYPD is also a bunch of thugs, extortionists, rapists, assassins, kidnappers, and torturers
And that department runs the security detail for the mayor and the mayor’s entire family. The mayor is required to be in their proximity at almost all times. They drive him around, they escort his vehicles, they manage crowds every day around him.
The pragmatism isn’t limited to getting votes. It’s life or death.
That’s a really good point, and it sounds like it would be pragmatic to not rely on the cops for security. That’s another place a Party would help, to provide security to candidates so they don’t have to rely on domestic right-wing death squads.
This is why I am not all that excited for Zohran’s tenure. I am excited that he got the votes, but the reality is he will not have the power to do what intends to do because realpolitik drives NYC.
It also looks like he’s also going to be coming into power at the start of a recession, and a mere mayor can’t do a lot in those conditions.
No, it’s pragmatic because frankly the police (even as corrupt and racist as they are) are necessary and making an enemy of them will undermine anything else he’d try to achieve.
lol ok
The dems always capitulate to “the center” because they are ideologically and financially committed to capital and do not want, under any circumstances, any variety of socialist in their party. It isn’t some strategy for chasing maximum votes. They would rather lose to the right than win to the left because of the class they represent.
The working class is surprisingly pro-police, without the police things go to hell. The police are a “public service” (even if in name only) and poorer people aren’t keen on that service being taken away.
I can’t be bothered going in-depth on this issue, because it doesn’t seem productive.
listen up you limp-wristed leftist worms. the police are the only thing keeping the BARBARIANS from the GATES. the thin blue line between CIVILIZATION and ANARCHY. the only thing keeping me from PISSING in my JAMMIES at night. no amount of dead black teenagers is too high a price to pay for their protection.