Domestic violence survivors and those who work or advocate in the field are blasting socialist New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s past comments against sending police on domestic dispute calls.
The candidate’s comments surfaced in a “Immigrantly” podcast in July 2020, posted recently on the Washington Free Beacon’s YouTube account:
Mamdani says during the “cross-cultural conversations” segment:
Police do not create safety… there are so many responsibilities we’ve given to police that, frankly, should have nothing to do with their departments… if somebody is jaywalking, if somebody is surviving, going through domestic violence — there are so many different, different situations that would be far better handled by people trained to deal with those specific situations, as opposed to an individual with a gun.
Not only have the comments outraged survivors and counselors in the field, such police calls have long been considered one of the most dangerous — and sometimes fatal — to uniformed officers as they encounter volatile situations where emotions are already out of control and they attempt to restore order and safety.
“There’s a lot of humans who are victims in the city of New York, and they need protection because sometimes it’s a matter of life and death,” Michelle Esquenazi, founder of the Victims Rights Reform, told Fox News Digital. “They’re hiding in the bathroom with their children, and they need someone to come immediately.”
Sonia Ossorio, Executive Director of National Organization for Women NYC, far from a being right-wing organization, told Fox that women’s lives are “at stake” and having unarmed responders would create even more risk.
“The number one cause of death and major injury for women in this country is done at the hands of their intimate partner,” Ossorio said. “So fast response by law enforcement that is trained and has the resources to intervene in major situations is critical.”
The Fox coverage spoke to several women who survived such situations. Victims advocate Esquenazi was one of them. She said New York police came to her rescue when her ex-husband attacked her inside their Queens home in 1993. She recalled:
I called 911, and they came running. They made sure that me and my children, and I was pregnant at the time, were safe. One of the officers took us to a back bedroom and made sure that we were calmed down and made sure that we had what we needed. They separated him from the situation immediately and essentially saved our lives.
Mamdani’s comments on the podcast came during the anti-police riots across the nation as a result of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis after he was pinned on the pavement by police.
In the past, the 33-year-old candidate, who won a seat in the New York state legislature in 2020, has long called to defund the police, labeling the New York Police Department (NYPD) “wicked and corrupt,” Fox reported.
In 2020, in the heart of George Floyd chaos, he made the bizarre claim, “Queer liberation means defund the police.”
Mamdani’s campaign website calls for the establishment of the “Department of Community Safety” which states it would free police to address more important calls than those with people suffering from mental problems and “failures of the social safety net.”
In last month’s debate, according to Fox, Mamdani claimed he would not defund the police but instead would “work with” officers by deploying mental health counselors and social workers to address homelessness and the mentally ill.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the best seller Eye of the Beholder , a case of carefully planned domestic violence that resulted in the homicide of a Michigan TV anchorwoman, and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
