Democratic mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani apologized directly to NYPD officers Wednesday for declaring years ago that the entire Police Department is “racist.”
“I apologize because of the fact that I’m looking to work with these officers, and I know that these officers, these men and women who serve in the NYPD, they put their lives on the line every single day,” Mamdani said in an appearance on Fox News, looking directly into the camera.
The mea culpa marked the first time Mamdani has offered an apology to the department’s uniformed staff as a whole for the harsh criticism he leveled against them. He has said for weeks that he’s apologized to NYPD officers in private conversations for the comments.
Mamdani leveled the racism accusation online against the NYPD in 2020 before he was elected to his current post as a state Assembly member representing parts of western Queens.
“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD,” Mamdani wrote in the June 2020 post.
Since launching his mayoral campaign, Mamdani has distanced himself from his own post, saying he wouldn’t as mayor seek to defund the NYPD. Rather, he has promised to keep police funding flat and try to relieve NYPD officers of the responsibility of responding to mental health calls by creating a new agency to oversee that.
The appearance on Fox News, a conservative-leaning outlet, was unusual for Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has centered his campaign on promises to tax the rich in order to fund expanded social programs like free public buses.
Seeking to explain his 2020 post, Mamdani said in the appearance that it came from a place of pain in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Since then, he said he has come to appreciate that police play a crucial role in ensuring “justice” for New Yorkers.
“And now what I know — having represented 100,000 people in western Queens — is that to deliver that justice you have to also deliver that safety, and that means representing the men and women of the NYPD,” said Mamdani, who’s polling as the favorite to win the Nov. 4 mayoral election.
In response to Mamdani’s apology, Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry, whose union represents the NYPD’s rank-and-file officers, said the actions of the next mayor “matter more” than words.
“An apology will not improve police officers’ quality of life. It will not protect them from being assaulted by dangerous repeat offenders or having their rights trampled by the CCRB,” Hendry said, referring to the Civilian Complaint Review Board that probes misconduct claims against officers. “Those are the issues we are focused on now, and they’re the same ones we’ll be discussing with the next mayor after Election Day.”
With Graham Rayman
Originally Published: October 15, 2025 at 5:52 PM EDT