Mamdani Backs Off Defunding Police, NYPD Families Call Him Out

Zohran Mamdani is having to come back to reality in the harshest way possible, and was forced to eat his own words.

The champagne socialist has been in Uganda at his family’s “compound,” celebrating his marriage away from the unwashed masses, surrounded by armed guards. Nice, huh?

But then the horrific Manhattan shooting happened. While the details are still trickling in regarding the shooter and his motives, and stories surrounding the victims are being told, mayoral candidate Mamdani suddenly found himself in the proverbial PR hot seat. With the murder of NYPD officer Didarul Islam, Zohran Mamdani was getting slapped around on X with screenshots and quote tweets of some of his greatest hits from 2020, where he asserted his intent to “defund the police” – specifically the NYPD – and mocked the police force.

It’s also interesting that he’s ripped NYPD as “anti-queer,” while holding (one of) his wedding celebration(s) in a country where gays are punished for existing by some combination of lengthy imprisonment & execution. He’s also very concerned about “human rights” in the Jewish…

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 29, 2025

Mamdani has now returned from Uganda, and right after visiting the murdered officer’s family, he immediately held a press conference to convince New Yorkers that he TOTALLY supports the NYPD and has NO intention of defunding the police now.

Socialist mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday explicitly backed down from his unpopular past “defund the police” stance in the wake of a Midtown mass shooting that left four dead, including an NYPD officer.

“I am not running to defund the police,” he said during a highly-anticipated news conference, hours after he visited slain cop Didarul Islam’s grieving relatives.

The Democratic nominee went straight from the airport to the hero officer’s family home in The Bronx upon returning from an ill-timed trip to Uganda.

The mass shooting Monday in a Park Avenue highrise by crazed gunman Shane Tamura – who killed Islam, a 36-year-old dad of two, and three innocent civilians before turning his assault rifle on himself – arguably presented the first test of Mamdani’s potential leadership.

But unfortunately for Mamdani, he was away celebrating his recent wedding.

Mamdani returned to the city Wednesday and headed immediately to Bronx for a private and apparently meeting with Islam’s family, toting a big bouquet of flowers.

He dodged questions before and after the visit, but was spotted hugging one of Islam’s grieving family members.

Afterward, Mamdani held a news conference with Bangladeshi American Police Association co-founder Shamsul Haque, a retired NYPD lieutenant, and the brother of Aland Etienne, a security guard who was among the victims in the Park Avenue terror.

The mayoral frontrunner nodded when asked if he stuck by his vow to disband the police department’s SRG, the elite NYPD unit that responded to the massacre, if elected.

He maintained that the SRG has been too often tapped to respond to protests, leading to civil rights abuses, and said the unit should be replaced with another emergency task force.

“There is a need to ensure that every act we take is one that is actually delivering public safety,” he said. “And what we see right now, especially with regards to how we respond to protests, is not in line.”

But Mamdani said his notorious past anti-NYPD tweets weren’t reflective of his campaign’s stance, which was that the police play an integral role in public safety, but shouldn’t be tasked with filling in gaps in the city’s social safety net.

He’s previously said social workers should be responsible for answering certain calls, including mental health disturbances and domestic violence reports.

“My statements in 2020 were made amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers held at the murder of George Floyd,” he said.

Let’s just say that his tone and tenor were less than convincing during this press conference.

You can see him turn the performance on. https://t.co/hGyo3gIKdP

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 30, 2025

So, Mamdani had to eat his previous tweets, support the NYPD, and try and convince voters that he’s ONLY going to tweak things a little. Here’s the problem: neither his supporters or his detractors actually believe him. And the people that REALLY don’t believe him? The widows and family members of other fallen NYPD officers.

Widows and grieving mothers of fallen NYPD hero cops aren’t buying mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani’s pro-police switcheroo.

Mamdani tried to make a clean break from his “defund the police” past on Wednesday as he privately visited with the family of NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, who was gunned down in the Midtown mass shooting by crazed gunman Shane Tamura.

“Now, when a police officer is killed he wants to say, ‘Oh, I support the police,’” Tatyana Timoshenko, the mother of slain NYPD Det. Russel Timoshenko, told The Post.

Timoshenko — whose 23-year-old son was shot and killed in 2007 while pulling over a stolen BMW — couldn’t shake Mamdani’s anti-cop past as the Democratic socialist reaffirmed his newfound support for police following his visit with Islam’s grieving relatives.

“It’s a little too little, too late,” she said.

“This is breaking my heart all over again,” she said. “It’s the worst nightmare for the family right now. Our hearts go out to them.”

Grace Machate, the widow of Robert Machate — a 25-year-old NYPD officer who was shot and killed in 1989 — simply said that Mamdani would be “dangerous” for the city.

“Right now, he is saying everything that these young people want to hear,” she said.

“He’s making promises, but they are not reality,” she said.

Like Islam’s widow, Machate was pregnant when her husband was tragically killed in the line of duty.

And if Mamdani is elected – as all polls right now seem to indicate – many rank-and-file NYPD officers are saying they will simply quit. Could this horrific mass murder be a wake-up call?

Gregory Floyd, head of Teamsters Local 237 who represents NYPD school safety agents and NYCHA security officers, said he’s not buying Mamdani’s line about repudiating defunding the police.

“To come out and say it now because it’s unpopular, it’s too late now,” said Floyd, who is black.

Ken Frydman, another Democratic operative and longtime police union adviser, said Mamdani can’t have it both ways.

“Defund the NYPD or not defund the NYPD?” he joked. “There isn’t a cop I know who trusts this guy.

It remains to be seen if this mass shooting has any kind of effect on the mayoral campaign. Up until now, Mamdani has gotten away with his “defund the police” history because he was The Hot New Thing™ and all the limousine liberals and champagne socialists (the ones who can afford their own personal security) loved supporting him. Now that reality has hit, simply calling for a nationwide ban on “assault rifles” isn’t going to work. We do not live in Zohran Mamdani’s fever dream of a socialist utopia. There are evil people out there who are willing to break whatever laws are in place to commit crimes. And when that happens, no one is looking to call a social worker to deal with a monster holding a gun and killing others. Mamdani was forced to admit that the police are necessary – for his security, at least – but he is trying to avoid eating the crow that he so very much deserves. And everyone can see that.

I expect that Zohran Mamdani will have a much more rehearsed and slick explanation if the question of his old tweets demanding defunding the NYPD comes back up. The real question is, do the citizens of New York believe the Mamdani of now, or the Mamdani of 2020? Considering how many of his other positions are firmly in line with the radical leftist communists, I would not take the bet that this sudden acceptance of the NYPD is genuine in the least.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click

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