New York has had a serious issue with crime, and while a part of that has to do with the fact that it's the most populous city in America, the truth is that the crime problem runs so deeply because Democrat policies have practically encouraged crime to flourish.
Part of that issue has been the handicapping of the New York Police Department. The thin blue line in The Big Apple has been only made thinner as its funding has been reallocated, its officers treated as villains, and criminals let off with slaps on the wrist for crimes they should have been imprisoned for.
Now it's only going to get worse.
According to the New York Post, NYPD officers are looking at mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as a person who will destroy the NYPD if he's elected, and many are threatening to turn in their badge and walk away from the force if he's elected, and for good reason.
Mamdani has said he'd defund the police in the past, only recently saying he won't do that now that he's within reach of the mayor's office. Police officers aren't buying the sudden reversal, however, and are making it clear that Mamdani would make New York City a dangerous place to be:
“The city would be totally unsafe for people who live here,” predicted Scott Munro, president of the NYPD Detectives’ Endowment Association.
“I go to bed and worry about the phone ringing. I’m worried about my members getting killed. I don’t want to plan any funerals,” he added.
“If you put a guy like him in there, our people are going to get hurt, and nobody’s going to want the job. It’s going to put recruitment back five more steps,” Munro said.
NYPD brass are quietly bracing for a potential mass exodus unless Mayor Adams, a Democrat and retired NYPD captain seeking re-election as an independent, or GOP mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa, pull off an upset.
“I’ve had guys call me and say ‘If he wins, I’m quitting,’” a police source said of Mamdani. “It’s just weird that New York City would vote for him. I know he’s not here for the police.”
If this does happen and the NYPD sees an exodus, it's going to add to an already nasty problem.
As I've reported in the past, the NYPD saw a 104 percent increase in officers abandoning the force since 2020, after George Floyd's death, and anti-police hostility began to rise as a result. Assaults against officers in New York skyrocketed and, thanks to soft-on-crime policies, officers didn't feel protected or even wanted. They left the force, either not wanting to become the next victim of anti-cop sentiment, or not wanting to become the next Derek Chauvin for just doing their job.
Read: The NYPD's Slow Collapse Shows the Domino Effect of Democrat Soft-on-Crime Policies
And that report I wrote was back in 2023.
Since then, data shows that the rate of police leaving the force either to retire or to escape, in 2025 is outpacing 2024:
The number of officers retiring since Jan. 1 rose from 382 in 2024 to 875 through March 31 this year, an increase of about 129%, according to figures provided by the NYPD. Officers who resigned before their official retirement dates increased 7%, from 168 to 178, the data showed.
Combined figures for normal retirements and resignations totaled 1,053 so far this year, up 91% from 2024.
The current NYPD headcount hovers around 34,000, down sharply from 37,000 in 2018, officials note. More than 5,000 officers are expected to be eligible to retire by later this year, law enforcement sources said.
Meaning that if Mamdani, a man who is openly no friend to the police and would probably set the stage for a defunding of the NYPD to focus on his own leftist idea of crime-fighting, win the mayoral race, the number of police left on the force after another mass exodus would leave the city in a far more vulnerable state than it already is.
According to a November 2024 article from the Gothamist, a survey found that a stunning 25 percent of the police force were actively looking to leave the department.
With Mamdani now poised to take power, this could be the nudge many officers need to abandon ship, and they're not being quiet about it as the Post reported:
“He’s trying to take the existing Police Department and turn them into social workers,” said Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels. “He wants to . . . neuter the Police Department.
“Cops would not be able to function as they have taken their solemn oath to do, to protect us, to go out there and grab those who are committing crimes and to have them locked up,” Sliwa added.
“He has a weird notion of how policing is, as if it should be people like Mahatma Gandhi walking around, you know, functioning as a social worker. That does not work.”
The radical left has made it very clear how they approach crime in the cities where they've taken control. If officers abandon New York, I don't blame them, but if they do, everyone else should probably think about doing the same.
