Apparently, there’s not enough crime in New York City. There’s not enough disorder, not enough chaos in the streets. It’s not bad enough yet. That’s the only conclusion I can draw from the alarming rise of radical leftist Zohran Mamdani, a man with zero executive experience and a well-documented history of anti-police, anti-Jewish rhetoric who is poised to become the next mayor of this great city.
Mamdani is a “defund the police” enthusiast who describes the New York City Police Department as, “…racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”
This privileged, clueless, rich kid with a serpent’s tongue and fake smile will push the city to a point where it will indeed become bad enough. How do I know? Because, as a retired member of the NYPD with over two decades of experience, I’ve seen this play before.
The original installment of this tragedy began in the early 1980s, starring Ed Koch as the lovable, liberal mayor of a crumbling, crime-plagued city from 1978 through 1989. His administration was paralyzed by corruption scandals and a crack cocaine epidemic that grabbed the city by the throat and would hold on for more than a decade, leaving tens of thousands of mostly minority murder victims dead in its wake. Homeless and mentally ill people turned the subways into zero-star hotels, using the passageways and stairwells as public toilets. The subways were filthy and painted with layers of graffiti that would have made the set designers for the movie “Escape From New York” blush. Chaos and crime reigned supreme. Businesses suffered, and tourism collapsed. The city was in a death spiral.
During Koch’s three terms, there were nearly 20,000 murders, along with tens of thousands of shooting incidents, and millions more became victims of violent crime. These were real people, tormented by the failed policies of liberal politicians.
Then, in 1989, a young, former federal prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani ran a tough-on-crime Republican campaign against David Dinkins, an unqualified, fiscally illiterate liberal Democrat, to replace Koch. Giuliani lost a very close race, however, and Dinkins became mayor in 1990. Apparently, 20,000 murders weren’t bad enough.
Over the next four years, another 8,000 New Yorkers would be murdered and hundreds of thousands more would become victims of violent crime. By 1993, 2,000 murders a year were the norm. Compare that number to last year, when, according to the New York Times, “…there were 377 homicides reported in 2024,” and you get an idea of how high that number really is.
Why was this allowed to happen? Because none of the Democrats running New York, the architects of failed liberal policies, lived in the inner city where the blood was being spilled. They never had to see it, but I did, along with the tens of thousands of brave cops I served with and the innocent civilians who lived there.
America’s largest city suffered under Mayor Dinkins. Along with a spike in crime came race riots and a general feeling of disorder and chaos in the streets. By 1993, it was finally bad enough for deep blue New York City to elect Rudy Giuliani as Mayor.
From 1994 through 2001, Giuliani made 2,000 murders a year a thing of the past. His crackdown on crime, corruption, and disorder was unprecedented. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and Crime Strategist Jack Maple initiated strategies and policies that would reduce crime over the next two-plus decades to historic lows not seen since the 1950s. This was done by implementing a zero-tolerance policy targeting high-crime areas and violent criminals. With the full support of the mayor and the police commissioner, we took criminals and guns off the streets, saving thousands of lives. Morale among the police, city residents, and business owners was at an all-time high.
The transformation happened right before my eyes. By 2002, when I retired from the NYPD, playgrounds that had been filled with drug dealers and criminals were now filled with children and their parents. The sound of gunshots was replaced with the sound of children laughing and playing.
The homeless and mentally ill using graffiti-covered subways as campgrounds became a thing of the past. There was an atmosphere of safety, law, and order. Tens of thousands of lives were spared during those years. New York became the safest big city in the world because of the NYPD.
Then, after three successful terms of Mayor Mike Bloomberg, it all began to crumble. In 2014, Bill de Blasio was sworn in as mayor of New York, followed by the incompetent, corrupt Eric Adams eight years later. In twelve short years these, arrogant, unqualified imbeciles, along with leftist Governors Andrew Cuomo, dopey Kathy Hochul, Soros flunky Alvin Bragg, a radical leftist activist city council and New York State legislature, reversed the accomplishments of the previous two decades by implementing new laws and rules that have protected criminals and destroyed the ability of the NYPD to police effectively. This cabal of idiots has again driven the city to the brink of disaster.
Public safety is the number one responsibility of government. Once again, the city is rife with homelessness and the mentally ill. Since 2017, more than 40 convicted cop killers have been released back onto the streets along with thousands of violent criminals. Add to that an untold number of illegal aliens, and now the sense of lawlessness and disorder is palpable.
Candidate Mamdani’s proposed programs, like unarmed “Mental Health Crisis Response Teams” responding to domestic disputes and incidents involving emotionally disturbed persons, would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous. These are some of the most volatile situations police officers deal with.
People will die. And other programs, like a civilian-run Department of Community Safety, will cost taxpayers in New York billions more while stripping the NYPD of its responsibilities and authority. This is Mamdani’s way of defunding the police without calling it that. This, combined with the insane laws and rules that have been implemented in the last several years to neuter the police, will further erode the morale of the NYPD — which is already at an all-time low — with seasoned, experienced officers fleeing the department in droves.
The city is already bad enough. Electing Mamdani will surely make it worse. Don’t give him four years to prove it.
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John Dove is a retired NYPD Detective Lieutenant and the former co-executive producer of “CSI-NY” starring Gary Sinise.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.