12 hours ago
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'When the rubber hits the road'
The success of Mamdani's fight, said Keegan Stephan, a 41-year-old former Occupy Wall Street organiser, must start with how the candidate leads the New York Police Department (NYPD), a sprawling force of more than 36,000 uniformed officers with an annual budget that can exceed $11bn.
Stephan, now a civil rights lawyer in New York, explained that overpolicing leads to more arrests for low-level offences, particularly in Black and brown neighbourhoods.
That, in turn, leads to a higher likelihood of undocumented individuals being funnelled into the legal system, making them vulnerable to targeting by federal agents, he said.
"The only way to actually stand in opposition to Trump and federal law enforcement is to curtail the overpolicing of communities of colour by the NYPD itself," Stephan said.
Mamdani has been acutely aware of concerns about how he would work with police and on Tuesday announced that his pick for police commissioner would be Jessica Tisch, the top cop serving under Adams.
That choice did not sit well with Stephan.
"I think it's incongruous for a Mamdani-type politician to appoint the same police commissioner as Eric Adams, who advocates for an entirely different type of policing than Mamdani claims to," Stephan said.
He pointed to Adams's support for "quality of life" enforcement as well as the NYPD's increased use of the "stop and frisk" tactic under his stewardship, both of which increase arrest rates for low-level crimes in minority communities.
Complaints against NYPD officers surged during Adams's time in office, reaching a 10-year high in 2024.
"[Tisch] has been behind a real uptick in crackdowns on low-level offences, ... which statistically has been proven not to work and to target communities of colour and impoverish people," he said. "That just seems very at odds with Mamdani's vision of policing in the city, and I worry that she could be an impediment to implementing those changes."
To be sure, Mamdani's messaging has been "significantly better" than Cuomo, Sliwa or erstwhile candidate Adams in terms of police reform and political protest in the city, Stephan said.
Occupy Wall Street protesters attend a meeting in Zuccotti Park in November 2011 [File: John Minchillo/The Associated Press]The candidate has called for the creation of a $1bn Department of Community Safety to handle noncriminal calls, including those concerning mental health and homelessness.
He has also pushed to give the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) final say on police discipline, shifting the authority from the police commissioner. And he has said he would do away with a police unit, the Strategic Response Group, which has a history of using excessive force against protesters.
But given the vast power of the NYPD, which maintains its own political might despite being under the command of the mayor, the personnel Mamdani picks to lead the department would have an outsized influence.
"I'm very concerned that no matter how progressive someone wants to be or believes themselves to be or positions themselves to be, when the rubber hits the road, they end up doing what more powerful interests demand," Stephan said.
