Mayoral hopeful Andrew Cuomo ranted about how the movement to defund police has led to an increase in crime during an interview with Stephen A. Smith — even though he once called the activist idea a “legitimate school of thought.”
Cuomo even signed an executive order in the summer of 2020 at the height of raging anti-cop protests that stripped all funding from any New York police departments that “refuse[d] to commit to a wide-ranging plan for reform.”
But in Monday’s televised interview with Smith, the Democrat sang a different tune.
“You’ve had this move starting in about 2020, an anti police movement right? Cut the funding for the police. Police are bad,” Cuomo said. “Well, that has consequences. You cut the police, don’t be surprised when crime goes up. You cut the police, don’t be surprised when people are afraid to go into the subways because of the rate of crime.”
Cuomo said defunding the police was a “legitimate school of thought” during a 2021 press conference in front of the governor’s seal but his campaign spokesman now said that remark was “taken out of context.”
“He never advocated to defund the police,” spokesman Rich Azzopardi told The Post. “He talks in questions. He argues both sides of the issue in the Socratic method.”
Cuomo in 2020 proposed the state install “monitors” in local police departments that didn’t submit reform plans in the wake of nationwide civil unrest — though all local police departments eventually complied with Cuomo’s demand for reform.
“Nobody got their funding cut and in the end they actually got some productive dialogue and helped improve relations,” Azzopardi said. “Supporting police and fostering better community relationships with police … that’s wholly responsible.”
Cuomo also signed another piece of legislation in June 2020 sought by anti-police activists that repealed a section of state criminal law that shielded police disciplinary records from public view.
In his 2011 budget, Cuomo slashed nearly $50 million out of the state’s $707 million police budget and earlier that same year Cuomo cut $560,000 in pay raises to 28 state police top brass that had been approved during the previous administration.
“In 2011 we had a massive (budget) hole. Everybody got cuts,” Azzopardi said.
Azzopardi said it was a “gross mischaracterization” to suggest Cuomo ever supported the defund the police movement.
