One cop, who said his fellow officers ‘cried’ and ‘couldn’t sleep’ after election night, told the Free Beacon he has ‘not spoken to one person who wants to stay’
Hundreds of New York City police officers are ready to leave the force in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s (D.) election victory, with some openly weeping after the cop-hating socialist seized the city’s mayoralty earlier this month, New York City Police Department officers told the Washington Free Beacon.
“We cried,” one officer—a 20-year veteran of the force—told the Free Beacon. “Some have told me they couldn’t sleep. People can’t f—ing believe it. This is like, one of the worst things that ever happened. This is probably worse than COVID.”
The officer, who said he has “not spoken to one person who wants to stay,” told the Free Beacon to expect mass departures before Mamdani takes power.
“The union people, our delegates—they’re coming to us and telling us that it’s going to be a few hundred,” he said.
The cop said both ICE and police departments across the country have reached out to NYPD officers with generous offers. Some departments are even willing to offer compensation to those who would forfeit lucrative New York City pensions by leaving.
“I think I’m gonna leave,” he said. “I am just weighing my options. I love Florida, and Florida sounds better and better every day.”
The officer’s comments come after a campaign in which Mamdani sought to play down his history of radical statements about the NYPD, an organization he called to defund and branded as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” He also mocked the idea of a police officer crying after the 2020 election—which followed a summer of anti-cop riots—writing, “nature is healing.”
A second NYPD officer told the Free Beacon he and plenty of others plan to get out of the department, with those conversations occurring “on a daily basis.” After years of politicization beginning with the Black Lives Matter movement, he said, Mamdani’s victory was “the last straw.”
“Guys [are] more afraid of the politics than the streets, you know what I mean?” he asked. “And that’s always been my concern. We see something on the news and guys feel more anxious to just leave. I think it’s just the whole idea of making our job harder.”
Mamdani has vowed to replace a police response to certain crimes, including what he terms “mental health” cases, with “crisis responders” under the Department of Community Safety (DCS), which will receive $600 million in “transfers of existing programs.” He has not specified which programs will have their budgets redirected. In addition to those mental health cases, Mamdani has said that “hate crimes” and “gun violence prevention” will fall under the DCS’s purview. Victims of domestic violence and hate crimes spoke out against Mamdani in interviews with the Free Beacon during the campaign, saying those crimes require a police response.
While a third police officer who spoke with the Free Beacon said he does not know whether Mamdani will “be able to deliver on most of” his promises, there is one in particular that has him worried: his plan to shift final say on disciplinary matters from the department itself to the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Half of the board’s members are chosen by the city’s public advocate, who, in the case of officeholder Jumaane Williams (D.), has a long anti-police record. In 2020, Williams threatened to block property tax collection if cuts to the NYPD’s budget did not go far enough and complained that the budget, which eliminated the entire next class of NYPD officers, might still allow the city to hire new cops.
“I think that’s probably one of the more dangerous things, especially on our end,” the third officer said. “It’s going to make cops hesitant, and everyone’s going to think twice before they do anything, because what they decide in 0.2 seconds someone’s going to spend months—if not years—nitpicking and ultimately ruin their career.”
Mamdani did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment.
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