Opinion: Fear isn’t leadership – New York needs policing built on trust

It was a cold night in February 2012, and I was a sergeant in the 44th Precinct. My team had been sent to the 47th Precinct in the Bronx after a police shooting left a young man dead in his own bathroom. The neighborhood was tense. At roll call, our lieutenant ordered each officer to bring back two stop-and-frisk reports and one summons by the end of the tour.

When he left, I told my cops something different: Do your job honestly. Don’t stop people just to fill numbers.

We came back with five reports instead of dozens. My lieutenant yelled, but I could live with that. What I couldn’t live with was fueling the mistrust already hanging over the community. Every unnecessary stop meant another person losing faith in us.

That night captured what was wrong with the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk era under then-Commissioner Ray Kelly. When he took over in 2002, there were under 100,000 stops each year. By 2011, nearly 700,000 people – mostly young Black and Latino men – were being stopped and humiliated, often without cause. A federal court later ruled the practice unconstitutional. Crime didn’t surge when the policy was scaled back; it stayed historically low. The numbers game never made us safer – it only deepened the divide.

Kelly also oversaw the NYPD’s infamous Muslim surveillance program, which mapped mosques, tracked student groups and monitored businesses without any evidence of wrongdoing. Those actions alienated entire communities and destroyed the very trust effective policing depends on.

Now, years later, Kelly has resurfaced to claim that “cops will flee in droves” once Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes office. That’s not analysis – it’s fearmongering. Officers are already leaving the NYPD in record numbers under the current administration, driven by low morale, forced overtime, long shifts and the toll on their families.

To suggest that police would abandon their oath because a new mayor expects fairness and accountability insults every honest officer I ever worked with.

After 21 years in uniform, retiring as a lieutenant commander, I know most cops simply want to fight crime, make a difference and go home with their integrity intact. They don’t want to chase quotas or enforce unconstitutional directives. They want leadership that lets them focus on real crime – violent crime – the work they signed up for.

That’s what Mamdani’s vision for public safety represents. His plan would allow officers to concentrate on violent offenses while a new Department of Community Safety handles nonviolent crises, such as mental health emergencies and homelessness – situations best managed by trained professionals rather than armed officers. That’s not anti-police; it’s smart governance. It ensures the right responders answer the right calls and frees police to do what they do best.

I’ve seen what happens when trust erodes. When people feel targeted, they may still dial 911 – but that’s often where cooperation ends. They hesitate to testify, give statements or help investigations. Public safety suffers when witnesses go silent and victims lose faith.

New Yorkers have heard this fear playbook before. We were told ending stop and frisk would unleash chaos. It didn’t. We were told ending Muslim surveillance would make us unsafe. It didn’t. The city remained secure because good policing doesn’t depend on violating rights – it depends on professionalism, fairness and community trust.

Kelly’s latest warning belongs to the past. New York deserves leadership that learns from mistakes instead of repeating them.

That night in the 47th Precinct, I told my officers to do what was right. The same principle applies to our city today. We don’t need fear. We need vision – and policing rooted in respect for both the people we serve and the badge we wear.

That’s the future Mamdani represents. And that’s the kind of New York worth fighting for.