If there is a way to be right and wrong about something at the same time, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has figured it out.
The subject? The New York City Police Department.
The incoming mayor, during a wide-ranging news conference last week, was right on target when he doubled down on the NYPD’s existing policy not to help the federal government carry out President Trump’s onerous immigration policies.
“There must be no cooperation between the NYPD and ICE,” Mamdani told reporters after handing out hot chocolate to residents in Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town.
“The NYPD’s job is to keep order, but it’s not to assist immigration. It’s to protect New Yorkers.”
The clarification was necessary after protesters recently claimed that New York City cops were helping ICE agents round up illegal immigrants in what would be a violation of the city’s status as a sanctuary city.
An NYPD spokesman disputed the claim, saying that the cops were only on hand to help disperse a crowd. A number of arrests were made as protesters tried to block ICE vehicles leaving a lower Manhattan garage.
“The NYPD had no involvement with the federal operation, and does not conduct civil immigration enforcement, period,” the spokesman told WPIX.
Affirming the sanctuary city policy wasn’t the only police issue to surface during the news conference.
Mamdani confirmed he intends to maintain a police force of 35,000 officers, the staffing level reflected in the current city budget — which could require hiring about 1,000 additional officers to offset attrition.
Several weeks ago, outgoing Mayor Adams added money to the city’s budget to hire an additional 5,000 cops, to bring the NYPD uniform headcount to 40,000 by July 2008, the highest number in 20 years.
“The vast majority of New Yorkers want more police officers on their streets and in their subways,” Adams, a retired NYPD captain, said at the time.
But Mamdani insisted that the city didn’t need as many as that.
“Thirty-five thousand is the budget number of police officers,” Mamdani said. “I think that’s the right amount. I think if we’re struggling to hire even up to that amount, any ideas of extending it beyond that are not reckoning with the reality.”
Try telling that to residents in Queens’ Whitestone neighborhood, which was besieged last month by a group of rowdy drag racers who rioted in the street and pummeled a homeowner when he confronted them and told them to get off his property.
Amid the chaos, the revelers also set off fireworks that ignited a parked car.
City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens), in a post on X, said the NYPD was slow to respond.
“These violent street takeovers should be met with maximum force by the police department,” she posted. “We have NEVER had these problems before. Now it’s an epidemic. What changed? We stopped arresting criminals.”
An NYPD representative later said a department chief recently met with Paladino and local residents, and that patrols will be increased in the neighborhood.
Officials also noted it was a busy night in the precinct, and that cops were responding to multiple high-priority incidents, including a DWI arrest, transporting a detainee to a hospital and a crash with injuries.
That sounds like a department that’s stretched too thin.
It’s nothing 5,000 more cops wouldn’t fix.
