The guy is doing a ‘Back Step’ on prior call’s for ‘Defunding the Police’….
Zohran Mamdani IS now facing the REALITY of running to be a Big City Mayor…..
This may tuirn out to be a defining moment for Mamdani…..
Zohran Mamdani immediately faced backlash Wednesday over his past calls to defund the police — after New York City’s deadliest mass shooting in 25 years and the completion of his 11-day vacation to Uganda.
Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral nominee and the leading candidate in that race, was out of the country when the shooting occurred Monday in Midtown Manhattan. Hours after his return, he joined groups representing victims of the tragedy and faced reporters’ questions about his absence and prior support for defunding the city’s police department.
“I am not defunding the police; I am not running to defund the police,” Mamdani told reporters Wednesday. “Over the course of this race, I’ve been very clear about my view of public safety and the critical role that the police have in creating that public safety.”
During the news conference, Mamdani stood with the Bangladeshi American Police Association, of which slain NYPD officer Didarul Islam was a member, and building service workers union 32BJ, which represented Aland Etienne, an office security guard who died in the attack.
Mamdani is returning to a city where polling shows him as the clear favorite, and he’ll try to maintain that lead through the tumult of a crowded general election in an unpredictable city. Mamdani’s opponents have homed in on his relatively limited political and management experience, and the past few days have served as a test of how the democratic socialist front-runner would respond to a crisis — and the pressure that entails.
At the height of the Defund the Police movement in 2020, Mamdani made repeated calls to slash the NYPD’s budget.
“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD,” he wrote on X that year….
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Mamdani shared his own words for the four victims, speaking emotionally about the heartbreak felt by their families. Earlier Wednesday, Mamdani visited the Bronx home of Officer Didarul Islam and had breakfast with his family, going there right after landing at John F. Kennedy Airport in the morning, he said.
Earlier Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul — who has yet to endorse a candidate in the mayor’s race — was asked about Mamdani’s support for defunding the police.
“That kind of defund the police attitude — it’s nothing I could ever support, and whether people have changed that position, I need to know,” she told LI News Radio. “I want to see a plan for making our city and the region safer and that has to involve the NYPD and increasing the ranks, not defunding them or decreasing the numbers.”….