Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani suggested in a resurfaced podcast appearance that the NYPD shouldn’t be responsible for responding to domestic violence calls.
The 33-year-old democratic socialist said that the NYPD shouldn’t respond to domestic violence calls due to fears of “escalation” by New York’s Finest in a 2020 interview on the Immigrantly podcast, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
“If somebody is surviving, going through domestic violence – there are so many different, different situations that would far better be handled by people trained to deal with those specific situations as opposed to an individual with a gun who has received quite a limited amount of training in general, but also in regards to these specific situations,” the Queens pol said.
Mamdani also noted that the NYPD shouldn’t similarly respond to situations involving homeless people on the train or jaywalking due to fears of “escalation” that could have fatal results.
The candidate ran successfully for state Assembly in 2020, years before his Democratic Party primary victory in the crowded mayoral race last month.
“We find so many people who are having a mental breakdown, or people who are just trying to sleep on the train, or people who are just suffering through something in their lives,” Mamdani said in the podcast.
“And instead of receiving a helping hand they were shot, they were Tased, they were killed.”
Mamdani’s campaign platform advocates for a new $1 billion Department of Community Safety that would respond to mental health crises and other situations usually handled by the police.
A representative for the campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
