Mamdani's past 'visceral disdain' for police 'scares a lot of New Yorkers' for good reason: NYC crime expert
"It's not so much as just that he said, well, I wanna allocate some of this money to other places. He has gone so far as to say that we should dismantle the entire department."
Mamdani recently attempted to walk back some of his past anti-police comments during a press conference in the aftermath of the shooting, but Mangual, who wrote an op-ed on the walkback for the New York Post, says he still has concerns despite the attempt to clarify past comments.
"Even if he doesn't necessarily follow through on the most radical positions that he has taken in the very recent past, he has expressed support for a lot of initiatives that would erode public safety in lots of different ways, including and especially in the communities that deal with the brunt of our nation's gun violence problem," Mangual said.
Mangual pointed to several possible scenarios under a Mamdani mayorship that could lead to problems for security in the city, including potentially working with the city council to eliminate the NYPD gang database, which Mangual said would be an "absolute disaster" for the city.
"The other thing that Mamdani mayoralty might get us is an NYPD that's even less equipped than the current NYPD, which is certainly operating well below the ideal level in terms of force size," Mangual explained.
"It's approaching skeleton crew status. The NYPD at the turn of the century had about 41,000 officers in its ranks, whereas now I think below 33,000 are just right around that mark. That's a really big change, especially given how many more 911 calls that department is fielding on an annual basis and how much more it has to do in a post-9/11 world where the department kind of took on these additional counter-terrorism and intelligence aspects to it. So, you run the risk of creating a situation in which a department that is already starved for recruits is going to become even more unattractive to people who are considering work in that department."
Mangual explained that Mamdani was part of a "legislative landscape" as a state assemblyman that pushed bail reform and discovery reform that "have essentially made it significantly less likely that perpetrators who are arrested will be, A, prosecuted and B, held to account in a meaningful way."
Mangual said he is concerned that Mamdani's resume will hurt police recruiting and eventually make the city less safe as the NYPD struggles to achieve full staffing.
"So, now you have a situation in which you might have a mayor who has just set himself up for a terrible relationship with the police department who is signaling that he's going to cooperate with an increasingly radical city council who wants to take even more away from that police department, who is then going to send a signal that, 'Hey, you are not going to have a good time working here,'" Mangual said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Mamdani campaign for comment.
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He said a free bus pilot program that he championed didn't make more millionaires and billionaires ride the bus, but rather helped increase ridership by New Yorkers who already qualified for Fair Fares. Beyond that, Mamdani argued that Cuomo's decisions as governor — particularly slashing $65 million in rental assistance programs — helped lead to a surge in Big Apple homelessness. 'What Andrew Cuomo is proposing, be it the rent control he cited, the rent stabilization he intends to speak about, is in many ways reflective of the fact that I live rent-free in his head,' Mamdani said, giving no indication he planned to leave his home. 'He's not looking to reflect on the fact that he eliminated more affordable housing than he created. He's not looking to reckon with his cutting of a voucher program that was then followed by a significant increase in homelessness in New York City. He's not looking to reckon with any of that.' 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