Mamdani on His Prior Call To Disband Elite NYPD: ‘Over the Course of this Race I’ve Been Very Clear About My View of Public Safety’

EXCERPT:

MAMDANI: “Over the course of this race, I’ve been very clear about my view of public safety and the critical role that police have in creating that. Public safety that officers are tasked with delivering while we ask them to respond to nearly every failure of the social safety net. And the vision that we’ve put forward in this campaign, despite what others may say, it’s not to defund the police. It is, in fact, to allow those officers to respond to the serious crimes that many of them signed up to address, and to do so by ensuring that we ask them to focus on those crimes. And we ask mental health professionals to respond to calls of mental health crises. And as it pertains to the Strategic Response Group, when it was first formed, there was an intention for its use to be more akin to the manner in which it was deployed earlier this week. What we have found, however, is the city has come to rely upon the Strategic Response Group as its primary means of response to acts of protest across the city when New Yorkers exercise their First Amendment rights.”