New York City's socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani attempted to distance himself from his previous anti-police rhetoric on Wednesday in a move that New York elected officials and a crime expert told Fox News Digital amounted to lip service.
Mamdani has long criticized the New York Police Department (NYPD), calling for it to be defunded in 2020. He has also frequently called it "racist" and said the department's Strategic Response Group should be disbanded.
In another social media post, Mamdani posted "nature is healing" in response to a comment about laughing at a cop crying in his car.
However, on Wednesday, in the wake of a Midtown Manhattan shooting that left an NYPD officer dead, Mamdani said his calls to defund the police were made out of "frustration" over George Floyd's death.
His comments left several in the community unconvinced that he had genuinely turned the page from antagonizing the police and with the belief that the walk back was politically driven as the city reels from the worst mass shooting in half a century.
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"Zohran 'Nature Is Healing' Mamdani's Wednesday presser struck me as a cynical and transparent attempt at damage control in response to an incident that served as a violent and somber reminder to New Yorkers of the enormous daily risks taken on their behalf by the men and women of the NYPD," Rafael Mangual, senior fellow and head of research for policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, told Fox News Digital.
Mangual went on to explain that Mamdani's explanation of his previous statements didn't go far enough.
"But even under the tragic circumstances in which the press conference was held, Mamdani balked at multiple opportunities to explicitly retract or apologize for his long and sordid history of anti-police statements," added Mangual, who penned an article in the New York Post Thursday on Mamdani's press conference.
"He seemed defensive when confronted about his past statements, and even found a way to reiterate prior criticisms of the very unit that led the response to Monday evening's mass shooting in midtown. It's going to take a lot more than a short press conference to undo the image of the anti-cop decarcerationist that Mamdani has been cultivating for years."
New York City Republican Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, an outspoken critic of Mamdani, told Fox News Digital that Mamdani's press conference shows he doesn't respect voters "because he thinks that we are too stupid to notice this blatant flip-flop."
"He spent years bashing the NYPD and pushing a radical agenda, and only now is he racing to the center because he finally realized this city supports our cops and doesn't want a socialist mayor," Vernikov said. "No one with half a brain is buying it."
New York Republican State Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz, a colleague of Mamdani's, told Fox News Digital that Mamdani's press conference was "political theatre."
"Let's not rewrite history," Blumencranz said. "While a police officer and innocent New Yorkers were being murdered in New York City, Zohran Mamdani wasn't even in the city - he was on a well-protected compound in Uganda. Now he's back, playing pro-police for the cameras?"
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Blumencranz said that Mamdani, who he referred to as an "absentee colleague," has built a "campaign on demonizing law enforcement" that has become his "brand."
"He called the NYPD 'wicked and corrupt,' said 'Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence,' and pushed to disband the very unit that responded to the shooting," Blumencranz said. "Now, after a primary win and a mass shooting tragedy, he wants voters to believe his convictions are/were just 'out of step'? This isn't growth - it's political theater. And New Yorkers - especially those mourning Officer Islam - deserve honesty, not opportunism dressed up as evolution."
Fox News Digital reached out to the Mamdani campaign for comment.
Mamdani attended the Thursday funeral of NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, who was killed in the Midtown Manhattan shooting.
Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who are both running as independents, were also in attendance.
Mamdani spoke glowingly about Officer Islam at the Wednesday press conference, met with the officer's family, and answered questions about his previous calls to defund the police.
"I am not running to defund the police," Mamdani said while describing himself as "a candidate who is not fixed in time, one that learns and one that leads, and part of that means admitting, as I have grown, and part of that means focusing on the people who deserve to be focused about."
