When a bitter gunman stormed a Manhattan office tower last week and killed four people including an NYPD officer, wannabe mayor Zohran Mamdani was about as far away from New York City as he could possibly have been.
Mamdani, the frontrunner in the race to become mayor of the nation’s largest city, was in Uganda, of all places, to celebrate his marriage in February to his bride, Rama Duwaji
Nothing wrong with that. Last I checked, New Yorkers are pro marriage and very pro honeymoon.
Mamdani was born in Uganda, has relatives there. and wanted to celebrate his wedding with his family abroad.
Still, some candidates and critics chastised Mamdani for his overseas absence after New York City’s deadliest shooting in decades.
“I don’t understand why you go to Uganda for two weeks, frankly, in the middle of a campaign,” said former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
This from the guy who lost.
Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman, beat Cuomo in June’s Democratic primary, and Cuomo’s run as an independent is looking like a longshot.
But Cuomo was definitely on to something when he criticized Mamdani for his record on the police.
Mamdani’s first stop after landing at Kennedy Airport from Uganda was the Bronx home of Police Officer Didarul Islam, one of the four victims of the Midtown shooting.
Mamdani arrived carrying flowers.
But what he didn’t have was a decent explanation about why he has been so out of touch with police over the years.
“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety,” Mamdani, a democratic socialist, tweeted in 2020. “What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.”
Awkward.
After Mamdani’s meeting with Islam’s family, Mayor Adams, who is running for re-election as an independent, tore into Mamdani for his claims that he would cut the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG) — the task force that responded to Monday’s deadly mass shooting.
“When you start dismantling the pieces of the law enforcement apparatus that are specifically designed to carry out functions, that is extremely dangerous,” Adams, a retired police captain, told CNBC.
Mamdani, who is 33, said his views are evolving, and that he was caught up in the fervor of the George Floyd murder. He said he no longer advocates defunding the police, but he doesn’t sound like he’s in a rush to defend them, either.
The last thing New York City needs is a mayor who thinks cops can do no wrong.
But the next to last thing New Yorkers need are cops who don’t think the mayor has their backs.
It’s bad for morale, and sets a dangerous tone.
Mamdami said he plans to attend Islam’s funeral, which will be filled with cops whose union has already backed Adams.
After NYPD officer Jason Rivera was gunned down in 2022, his widow, Dominique Luzuriaga, ripped Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg during a eulogy at the cop’s funeral over policy changes that could put some criminals back on the street.
And after NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were killed in 2014, hundreds of cops lining the streets outside their funerals turned their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio for backing demonstrators who were protesting a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict any cops in the police chokehold death of Eric Garner.
Mamdani, who’s already off to a bad start with cops, has a lot of explaining to do. He might start by helping New Yorkers understand why there was so much security at his lavish Uganda party.
According to reports, Mamdani spared no expense to keep his guests safe, with military style commando guards and a phone-jamming system.
Whoever thought you could feel safer at a party in Uganda than you could on a subway platform?
It’s not a stretch for New Yorkers to wonder why they don’t deserve the same protection
