Opinion: Mamdani’s test on policing

The race for mayor of New York City has already garnered historic attention – and not just because Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is now the clear front-runner. His platform promises to redefine the city’s relationship with the nation’s biggest police department.

Mamdani’s rise has coincided with his proposed creation of a new Department of Community Safety – a $1.1 billion agency aimed at addressing the root causes of crime, which will gradually assume response to mental health service calls and centralize community-based violence interruption programs.

But while this proposal signals a major policy pivot, Mamdani has largely steered clear of the NYPD accountability issues that plagued former Mayor Bill de Blasio – who ran on police reform, but who critics argue later abandoned the issue altogether.

In recent weeks, this inevitable challenge has come into sharper focus, and it may prove more difficult than restructuring agencies or reallocating funds.

In early June, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch overruled an NYPD judge’s recommendation that she fire Lt. Jonathan Rivera, who shot and killed 31-year-old Allan Feliz, declining to discipline Rivera at all. Her decision has sparked intense criticism from Feliz’s family and criminal justice advocates alike.

The following week, four former NYPD chiefs – each with decades of service – filed explosive lawsuits alleging that they were forced out of the department after exposing misconduct, political interference, and corruption tied to Mayor Eric Adams’ inner circle. 

The week after that, former interim NYPD Commissioner Thomas Donlon – a longtime veteran of federal law enforcement who led the department for just over two months in late 2024 – brought the issue to a boiling point with a 251-page lawsuit alleging that the NYPD was “criminal at its core.” The suit details a sweeping array of corruption and calls for the appointment of an independent federal monitor to oversee the department’s disciplinary processes, whistleblower protections and promotion decisions. 

The power to kill reform and prevent culture change

I spent years inside two of the country’s prominent police oversight systems, working first as a supervising investigator for the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) and later as the executive director of the Community Police Review Agency in Oakland, California.

Both times, I managed independent investigations – I was not a cop – and both times, I saw the same issues: police departments can manipulate narratives to protect themselves from accountability, steer investigations to serve political ends and obstruct independent oversight. However, these issues were far more pronounced in New York.

For decades, officers and watchdogs have warned that NYPD crime stats are inherently unreliable – vulnerable to manipulation by misclassifying charges, burying reports or upgrading low-level offenses to make the streets seem more dangerous. In a city where police shape the numbers that define “reality,” every reformer risks playing on a rigged scoreboard.

Within a police department, an investigation can be steered toward a desired outcome, whether by exonerating a favored officer or targeting a whistleblower.

And I have personally seen how the NYPD has gone to great lengths to obstruct oversight, conceal records and delay independent investigations to the point of absurdity – behavior entirely consistent with what’s detailed in the whistleblower lawsuits.

The first round of whistleblowers

The first four whistleblower lawsuits are a blueprint for understanding how power inside the NYPD actually works. The plaintiffs are former Chief of Detectives James Essig, former Assistant Chief Christopher McCormack, former Assistant Chief of Internal Affairs Joseph Veneziano and former Chief of Professional Standards Matthew Pontillo – men who, until recently, were at the heart of NYPD operations.

Their lawsuits allege that:

• Cronyism dictated officer promotions, sometimes in exchange for money.
• Officers were installed into sensitive units without qualifications or vetting.
• Whistleblowers were punished for cooperating with prosecutors and internal audits.
• Adams’ closest allies, including former Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks, used the department for political patronage and personal protection.

Sarena Townsend, attorney for the four chiefs, put it bluntly: “These are real life consequences and if this is how the New York Police Department is being run, we should all be afraid.” (Townsend herself knows all about the Adams administration’s lack of accountability; she was forced out as head of investigations at the city Department of Correction after she started digging into a backlog of thousands of use-of-force cases in city jails.)

Former NYPD commissioner ups the ante

Donlon’s lawsuit raised the stakes even further, alleging that the NYPD under Adams had devolved into a “racketeering enterprise” and a “coordinated criminal conspiracy.”

Donlon’s lengthy suit describes the NYPD as engaging in systemic corruption – including allegations of wire fraud, mail fraud, forgery, retaliation, conspiracy to silence a whistleblower, obstruction of justice, bribery and more.

Throughout the suit, Donlon highlights a sharp contrast – on one hand, Adams and NYPD executives rewarded individual acts of misconduct and officers with histories rife with misconduct in various attempts to consolidate political and financial power through promotions, raises, inflated pensions and enhanced access to overtime. On the other, effective officers deserving of praise or promotions were sidelined.

Further, as Donlon uncovered these issues, he and those close to him faced retaliation. Donlon himself was essentially stripped of his duties and reduced to commissioner in title only.

Donlon’s suit ultimately calls for the appointment of an independent federal monitor to oversee NYPD disciplinary processes, whistleblower protections and promotions to prevent further abuse.

Back at square one?

These suits aren't policy disagreements. They are accusations of institutionalized retaliation, corruption and suppression of truth – issues that jeopardize public safety in New York City. And they make one thing painfully clear: any mayor who doesn’t confront this head-on will be living in it.

Over the decades, investigators have consistently revealed NYPD’s pattern of shielding insiders, manipulating oversight and silencing dissent from within.

The whistleblowers’ allegations echo decades of institutional failure – from the Lexow Committee in the 1890s, which uncovered evidence of extortion, bribery and corruption, to the Mollen Commission in 1994, which stated that the NYPD tolerated a culture that fostered misconduct and concealed lawlessness, and the regular reports from the current NYPD federal monitor blasting the department for constitutional violations.

Far from resolving these issues, the NYPD seems to be back at square one when it comes to accountability. As Donlon’s suit puts it: “While the challenges within the NYPD long predate Defendant ADAMS, his administration allowed systemic dysfunction to metastasize into something far more dangerous: weaponized criminality.”

If a department is subject to layers of internal political corruption, it’s no wonder that more public failures of accountability will follow. The killing of Eric Garner, Kawaski Trawick and countless others serve as harrowing examples.

Mamdani’s test

Mamdani appears to have the political momentum to win – and the city seems hungry for a mayor with a new vision of policing. But this raises a question not just for him, but for politicians nationwide: Can a mayor create a new public safety agency that cooperates with its existing police department without also confronting police corruption head-on?

Even if Mamdani succeeds in launching the Department of Community Safety, it wouldn’t exist in a vacuum. It would share data systems, crisis response protocols and media narratives with the NYPD. And if the existing department were permitted to manipulate statistics, stonewall joint initiatives or spin the press against new approaches, it could quietly sabotage reform from the inside. 

That’s why addressing corruption isn’t just a moral imperative for Mamdani – it’s a logistical necessity.

Keep Tisch?

Mamdani’s most important decision, should he ascend to Gracie Mansion, may be whom he taps to run the NYPD. Not just someone who agrees with his policies, but someone who can fight for them from within the institution.

Any commissioner in a Mamdani administration would need to commit to significantly extending the reach of civilian oversight, expanding whistleblower protections for individual officers and truly ending notorious units like Adams’ Community Response Team and the widely criticized Strategic Response Group. Framed thoughtfully, these reforms could prove politically popular with officers of all ranks who have grown more cynical in the Adams era. And ironically, it may take someone resembling Tisch herself – an insider with bureaucratic muscle and a clear command of the internal levers of the department – to carry out Mamdani’s vision.

However, recent events have thrown significant roadblocks in the way of any union between Mamdani and Tisch. In particular, her decision to shield Lt. Rivera from discipline – especially in the face of her own department’s judgment that he should have been fired – will raise doubts about her commitment to accountability over politics, especially given that she’s been floated as a potential future mayor herself.

Her continued ties to an Adams administration facing criminal investigations and whistleblower lawsuits may weaken her credibility – not just with reformers, but with disillusioned rank-and-file officers. If Donlon indeed faced the daunting criminality described in his lawsuit, it raises urgent questions: What pressures has Tisch faced? How has she responded? And will that response bring credibility – or caution – to an incoming administration?

Mamdani will certainly be seeking answers in the coming months.

The bottom line

If Zohran Mamdani wins, he may quickly be forced to tackle police corruption head-on. He’d likely have the mandate and the moment to do it. These lawsuits, and the compounding crises before them, give him more than just evidence – they give him the political cover to overhaul a system apparently designed to protect itself first and New Yorkers second.

But accountability won’t just start with a new commissioner. It will begin with removing the power to manipulate facts or conceal the truth. Because as long as a police department can manufacture crises to kill reform – or hide misconduct to protect allies – no mayor, no matter their politics, will ever be able to fix it.