NYC mayoral candidates debate public safety on campaign stops

At a press event in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, independent mayoral candidate and ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a plan to raise NYPD officers’ starting salaries and expand a controversial police unit known as the Strategic Response Group. Cuomo’s plan would give new officers a bonus totaling $15,000 after one year of service. The plan, which includes other stipends, is estimated to cost $250 million over five years.

In the process of explaining the plan – and with the aid of a trusty PowerPoint slideshow – Cuomo again brought up his rival Zohran Mamdani’s criticism of the NYPD and past support for the defund movement, showcased in tweets from the Assembly member, including ones posted during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. In the wake of New York City’s deadliest mass shooting in 25 years, public safety has taken center stage in the city’s mayoral race. In the past week, Democratic nominee Mamdani again distanced himself from past calls to defund the police as his opponents, directly and indirectly, tried to attach the current front-runner to those statements. 

Asked about the fact that Mamdani has said that he won’t defund the police as mayor, Cuomo responded, “I am skeptical of politicians who change their positions weeks before an election.” (Defunding the police was not a part of Mamdani’s platform during the mayoral primary campaign either.)

Meanwhile Mayor Eric Adams, who is also running for reelection as an independent, appeared with NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch – who Cuomo said “is doing a very good job” – on the other side of the East River to announce an expansion of quality of life teams across Brooklyn.

In downtown Manhattan, Mamdani appeared at District Council 37 headquarters with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren for a listening session with union members on child care. When asked about Cuomo’s plans to retain and recruit NYPD officers with salary bumps and expand the Strategic Response Group, Mamdani stuck to his own public safety platform, calling out the expanding scope of police officers’ duties as a driver of attrition in the force. “A leading cause of their departure is forced overtime, and the fact that every year we ask them to take on additional responsibilities,” Mamdani said, before plugging his own proposal to shift mental health responses away from NYPD officers and to a new Department of Community Safety. “New Yorkers rightfully have concerns around public safety, and I want to empower police officers to respond to serious crime and hire the mental health professionals to respond to mental health calls.”