Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and riding a wave of far-left energy, is now trying to hide his past calls to dismantle the police as he positions himself to become New York City’s next mayor. Back in 2020, Mamdani cheered defunding and abolishing police, calling the NYPD “wicked and corrupt” and tweeting, “Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence.” He even claimed “queer liberation means defund the police,” tying far-left social causes to police abolition in a moment of peak BLM fervor.

But now, after crime has surged in America’s cities following radical anti-police policies, Mamdani is changing his tune, telling voters he won’t defund the police and wants to “work with the police” to create public safety. In a recent debate, he admitted police have a “critical role to play in creating public safety” and acknowledged that over 60% of crimes remain unsolved, signaling he wants officers focused on violent crime while social workers and mental health professionals handle non-violent incidents.

Mamdani’s shift comes as even Democrats are waking up to the devastation caused by defunding police, with rampant crime, surging homicides, and devastated neighborhoods hitting lower-income communities the hardest. Joe Gamaldi of the Fraternal Order of Police slammed Mamdani’s “failed social experiment” and warned that the people hurt most by defunding the police were “lower income, disenfranchised communities” that Mamdani claims to care about while pushing radical ideology.

Despite his pivot, Mamdani is still floating ideas like slashing the NYPD’s communications budget and reducing police overtime while proposing a new Department of Community Safety funded by reallocating $600 million from other programs and hiking taxes on wealthy New Yorkers. Critics see this as window dressing on the same radical agenda that has made America’s big cities less safe under progressive leadership.

Mamdani’s rise has been powered by grassroots volunteers and a savvy social media operation targeting younger progressive voters hungry for the same radical change that Ocasio-Cortez rode to power. If elected, Mamdani would become the youngest mayor in over a century, seizing control of America’s largest city while insisting he’s changed his mind on the defund movement he once championed.

The question for New Yorkers is whether they will trust a candidate who openly advocated dismantling the police and now claims he wants to keep them, while quietly promising to slash budgets and push radical restructuring under the guise of “community safety.” Voters will decide if Mamdani’s about-face is genuine or if New York is about to repeat the same failed progressive experiments that have made its streets more dangerous and its citizens less safe.