City Council Speaker Julie Menin is raising serious concerns over Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent decision to maintain the current staffing levels of the Police Department, contrary to previous plans for expansion.
In an interview broadcast on Fox 5 New York on Friday, the Manhattan Democrat expressed the council’s apprehension about the mayor’s choice not to increase the NYPD’s personnel. “We are concerned about that,” she remarked when questioned about the council’s stance on Mamdani’s approach.
Menin highlighted that the city’s population has significantly increased since 9/11, yet the number of officers remains unchanged. “We’ve got the same number of officers basically that we had on 9/11 yet the city has grown substantially,” she pointed out.
Emphasizing the importance of this issue, she noted, “So that is an area of real concern,” and mentioned that the council is also vigilantly monitoring the city’s crime statistics.
“We do want to make sure that the NYPD has the proper resources,” Menin stated, underscoring the necessity for adequate support for law enforcement.
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Mamdani’s predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, had announced the plan to surge the department’s ranks by 5,000 on his way out in October, putting pressure on the anti-police Democratic socialist candidate in the campaign’s last days.
The proposal would have upped the NYPD’s ranks to 40,000, the highest levels in more than 20 years.
Mamdani at the time was quick to shoot down the idea, maintaining that he’d keep the headcount at the current 35,000.
That’s one campaign promise he did follow through on, as his $127 billion preliminary budget proposal unveiled Tuesday did not include funding for the new cops.
“It’s not a question of headcount. It’s a question of safety,” he previously said when pressed about Adams’ plan.
Councilman Frank Morano (R-Staten Island) also slammed Mamdani’s reversal of the Adams proposal.
“Cancelling the planned expansion of the NYPD is the wrong decision at the wrong time,” Morano said. “When you weaken your police force, everything else suffers.”
In 2019, the NYPD stood strong at nearly 38,000 officers. But the ranks steadily became depleted due to a mass of retirements, with lagging recruitment among anti-cop sentiment in 2020.
Even under Adams, the city struggled to hire cops, for years failing to climb to and fill the budgeted number of 35,000.
Mamdani faced blowback during the mayoral campaign for saying he didn’t want to add any cops to the force.
Instead, he vowed to slash the NYPD’s overtime budget and funnel those funds into the a new $1.1 billion agency, dubbed the Department of Community Safety, which would handle all mental health calls.
Mamdani, though, hasn’t offered up much information on how that new agency would operate in the real world, opposed to empty campaign slogans.
He also didn’t allocate funding for the DCS in his current budget proposal, though City Hall said it would be included in the April update.
“The Mayor is deeply committed to establishing the Department of Community Safety, and this new Deputy Mayor will play a key role in setting the foundation for it with the help of First Deputy Mayor Fuleihan,” said City Hall spokesperson Sam Raskin.
