Zohran Mamdani Called To Stop Sending Cops to People ‘Going Through Domestic Violence’

New York City socialist’s mayoral platform includes a call to replace cops with ‘crisis responders’ in ‘mental health’ cases

Socialist New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani said during a 2020 podcast appearance that he did not believe calling the police was an appropriate response to domestic violence, an issue which the New York Police Department (NYPD) dealt with more than 100,000 times in 2024.

Mamdani made the previously unreported comments as part of a wide-ranging denunciation of the NYPD during an appearance on the Immigrantly podcast in July 2020.

“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,” Mamdani said.

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The revelation comes as Mamdani runs on a mayoral platform that would replace police with “crisis responders” in “mental health” cases. Mamdani’s policy memo does not define such cases, and his campaign representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether he would prevent the police from responding to reports of domestic violence.

Sonia Ossorio, president of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women, told the Washington Free Beacon that New York City women would suffer if police no longer respond to domestic violence incidents.

“Domestic violence cases are often the most high-lethality cases where police response is urgently needed,” Ossorio said. “The idea of removing police protection is outrageous. It’s yet another example of his views of policing that are uninformed and dangerous.”

A 2021 World Journal of Psychiatry study found that “intimate partner violence” is the “leading cause of homicide death for women” in the United States and presents a heightened risk for women between the ages of 18 and 24, women from racial and ethnic minority groups, and women with mental and physical disabilities.

The NYPD recorded more than 110,000 domestic violence incidents in the city during 2024. The four worst precincts for domestic violence—with more than 3,000 recorded incidents each—were located in poor and heavily minority districts around East New York: Little Haiti, the North Bronx, and the South Bronx.

Former NYPD homicide detective Pete Panuccio, who spent four decades with the department and responded to hundreds of domestic violence incidents, called a lack of police involvement “absolutely insane.”

“Homicide rates will increase, women will be pulverized,” he told the Free Beacon. “Let’s face it, 99 percent of the injuries inflicted were usually by men on women. There will be no defense for at-risk people. I’ve been in this bad movie before.”

Mamdani’s Immigrantly appearance took place in the weeks after the death of George Floyd. Mamdani said police in minority communities acted as an “occupying force” and made clear he supported the “Defund the Police” movement which took hold over a wide swath of the Democratic Party during the summer of 2020.

“Police do not create safety for many, many people across the city and the state,” Mamdani said. “Police actually create and amplify violence.”

Mamdani wrote in an X post from June 2020 that “the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety” and that “what we need to do is #DefundTheNYPD.”