Mayor Zohran Mamdani is under increasing scrutiny from civil rights advocates following his handling of a viral incident involving NYPD officers who assaulted a man during an arrest based on mistaken identity.
This week, criticism intensified as Rev. Kevin McCall, a well-known clergy leader from Brooklyn, expressed dissatisfaction with Mamdani’s actions since the incident on April 14. McCall remarked that the mayor appeared to be all smiles but had not achieved tangible results.
After a meeting with NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch on Monday, McCall conveyed Tisch’s acknowledgment of issues within Brooklyn North Narcotics, quoting her as saying, “the units have gone rogue,” as reported by 1010 WINS.
The meeting followed the online circulation of an eight-minute video depicting two plainclothes detectives assaulting a man, later identified as Timothy Brown, inside a Brooklyn liquor store. The footage has sparked widespread outrage.
Subsequently, police admitted that Brown was not the individual they intended to apprehend, leading to the dismissal of all charges against him.
Police later acknowledged Brown was not the suspect they were seeking, and charges against him were dropped.
In response to the incident, Tisch disbanded the narcotics team involved and reassigned at least eight of its officers.
Four officers directly tied to the arrest were placed on modified duty.
At the time McCall made his comments Monday afternoon, the Mamdani administration had said only that the NYPD was investigating the incident and no additional steps had been announced.
“The violence used by NYPD officers in this video is extremely disturbing and unacceptable. Officers should never treat a person this way. The NYPD is conducting a full investigation into this incident,” Hizzoner wrote on X last week.
Other activists also criticized Mamdani’s restrained response.
Hawk Newsome, co-founder of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, said the video reflected broader problems in the NYPD’s narcotics units and called for accountability.
Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, said the video brought back “déjà vu” from her own experience with police violence.
Mamdani addressed the case Monday night at an unrelated event with WNYC, saying his administration had a “tapestry of responses” to the video.
But he largely described steps Tisch had already announced earlier in the day, including reassigning the officers.
“In that video, it was incredibly disturbing, but also unacceptable,” Mamdani said. “There were the immediate actions that we took to reassign these officers.”
Mamdani has long had a tense relationship with the NYPD, but the backlash over this case has put him under a new kind of pressure from both activists and police critics.
“We have heard from multiple constituents that this is part of something larger, something that troubles them,” Mamdani said. “That means we in city government need to look deeper than just this one case, and as we reflect on that, we will share with New Yorkers the steps we are going to take.”
