How Mamdani canceled ‘Cop City’

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been playing some off-hours basketball at the police academy – and it turns out he crossed Eric Adams and blocked his shot.

Mamdani has officially canceled his predecessor’s plans for a new unified “Public Safety Academy” that would be built on the lot next to the existing police academy in College Point, Queens, City Hall confirmed Tuesday. 

“We stopped plans for the previously proposed public safety academy,” a Mamdani administration spokesperson said in a statement. 

That plan dates back to 2017, when then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city would budget $100 million to build a state-of-the-art correction academy. And in 2021, months before he left office, de Blasio announced they’d build it next to the police academy. The city still hadn’t broken ground in 2024, when Adams announced he’d expanded the plans to train not just correction officers, but all the city’s smaller law enforcement teams, like sanitation and parks. 

Some progressive activists derided that $225 million proposal as New York’s “Cop City” – inspired by the mass organizing against a similar police training facility in Atlanta, Georgia. And that included Mamdani.

“We do not need to spend more than $200 million on a ‘Cop City’ training facility in Queens,” Mamdani said, unprompted, in a 2024 interview with City & State ahead of the launch of his mayoral campaign. He reiterated that throughout the campaign, saying “we can put that money to better use.”

Adams defended the plan last year, when Mamdani and his fellow mayoral contenders all said they’d kill it – writing them off as ““defund-police, bail-reform candidates,” as the New York Post reported.

But Mamdani has apparently followed through with his campaign promise. It’s a rare example of Mamdani actually fulfilling a campaign pledge on public safety. The candidate who once called decarceration his “first commitment” has largely maintained Adams’ criminal justice policies, after retaining his police commissioner. Arrests for low-level crimes remain high, and the average daily jail population has hardly decreased in Mamdani’s first year.

Even choosing the police academy as a basketball gym – when there are many other city-owned courts closer to the mayor’s home – is a surprising move for a mayor who previously called to defund the NYPD and described the department as “wicked & corrupt” and “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” Mamdani has distanced himself from his previous comments and apologized, but some of his loyal allies,like leftist Jewish activist Rafael Shimunov, expressed a joking discomfort with the mayor’s use of policing infrastructure. “One day, Gd willing, all police (facilities) will be basketball courts,” he said on X.  

City Council Member Vickie Paladino, a far-right Republican whose district includes the police academy, criticized the move.

“This is disappointing but unsurprising, as the new academy expansion has been targeted by anti-cop activists aligned with Zohran's DSA since its announcement. The mayor is committed to de-policing and decarceration, and this cancellation is just another part of the agenda,” she said in a statement. “We should be doing everything we can to recruit good new cops and give experienced officers reason to stay by investing in them. Instead the mayor is doing the opposite.”

The mayor’s late night basketball habits were first reported by Politico. Former colleagues in the legislature who’ve played basketball with him – and were granted anonymity to speak frankly about his play – weren’t complimentary of his skills, but described his play as “energetic” and said he was “athletic and has good stamina.”