Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani wants to reimagine public safety in New York City. On the campaign trail, he promised to devote more than $1 billion to the “Department of Community Safety,” a new agency that will “tak[e] a public health approach to safety.”
But what will his agenda look like in practice? Late last month, the mayor-elect released the roster of his transition team’s Committee on Community Safety, a 26-person group that will advise him on criminal-justice and related issues. The list contains several activists who are not only openly hostile to law enforcement but also reject the very concept of carceral punishment.
These choices raise questions about Mamdani’s real intentions. He has publicly distanced himself from his earlier support for “defunding the police” and other 2020-vintage radicalisms. But his selected advisors suggest he may not have traveled as far from those positions as he now implies…