‘We’re Doomed’: Former NYPD Chief Sounds Alarm on Potential Mamdani Agenda

Less than a week away from arguably the most consequential mayoral election in New York history, concerns are mounting over the impact that the Democratic Socialist nominee and election frontrunner, Zohran Mamdani, could have on the NYPD — the one city agency he could refashion to suit his vision for public safety. If elected, Mr. Mamdani will have the power to pick his police commissioner and freeze hiring. He can also kill the NYPD’s overtime budget, reallocating the money to underwrite his proposed Department of Community Safety project.That ambitious, if not myopic, plan aims to provide “prevention-first, community-based solutions” on issues like mental health, hate crimes, subway safety, and victim support. He argues that cops should not be focused on repairing the city’s social safety net.Whatever comes of the mayor’s race, and subsequently the NYPD, the department’s recently retired chief, John Chell, says he will be uneasily watching the developments as an outsider for the first time in more than three decades.“If you get the wrong person in there, and it goes to a whole new genre of democratic socialist agenda, then we’re doomed,” Mr. Chell tells The New York Sun.Mr. Mamdani has said he intends to retain Jessica Tisch as NYPD commissioner if she chooses to stay, asserting that he made that decision in order “to deliver on the agenda that I’ve been running on.” Ms. Tisch has yet to comment publicly on his remarks. But the candidate has suggested killing the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, which regularly responds to social protests, and giving the Civilian Complaint Review Board final authority on disciplining cops, a power historically held by the commissioner. Combined with reports of flagging morale and the anticipated retirement of nearly 4,000 NYPD officers, Mr. Chell says he’s not hopeful for the NYPD’s future. “We’re his biggest, most reliable go-to agency in this city, we are operating 24/7, 365 days a year. We are at the forefront of most news stories on a daily basis keeping this city safe,” Mr. Chell says. “Cops are working oh so hard as we speak, and you can only stress them so far before we do have a retention problem.”A Mamdani victory, he fears, will bring a return to a worldview where the criminal is a victim of circumstances and police are responsible for society’s ills.A resurfaced video shows Mr. Mamdani speaking at a 2023 Democratic Socialists of America convention where he linked Israel’s influence in the West with systemic brutality by the NYPD. “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by” the Israel Defense Forces, Mr. Mamdani said.It was just one in a litany of criticisms he has made of the city agency he could soon depend on to execute his alternative approach to law enforcement. In a 2020 X post he accused it of being “racist,” “anti-queer,” and a “major threat to public safety.”During a press event in Hell’s Kitchen on Tuesday night, Mr. Mamdani downplayed the video by insisting he is focused on the NYPD’s ongoing “retention crisis,” which Mr. Chell believes would only worsen under the candidate’s progressive policies.Mr. Mamdani believes his creation of a $1.1 billion Department of Community Safety will help stanch the depletion of the NYPD’s headcount. By adopting a public health approach to public safety and seeking to prevent violence before it occurs, he says, he will let cops “do the work of a police department, not the work of social services.” “Police have a critical role to play. But right now, we’re relying on them to deal with our frayed social net,” Mr. Mamdani’s campaign writes in its 17-page public safety plan.The idea would mark a sea change in city law enforcement. Mr. Mamdani envisions dispatching trained professionals and social workers instead of police to many non-violent — or less violent — incidents, ranging from domestic violence calls to dealing with mentally ill homeless people in the subways. Mr. Chell says Mr. Mamdani’s premise that cops are being asked to handle too many public health matters is a “false narrative.” “I did this job for 32 years. I’ve never heard a cop complain about having to do what we call EDP (emotionally disturbed person) jobs. It’s not something that rang true continuously,” Mr. Chell tells the Sun.As for the DCS proposal, Mr. Chell says he “likes the theory” but questions how the plan would be put into practice.“I think everyone wants to get the mentally ill the help they need and the facilities they need. I don’t think anyone would say otherwise,” Mr. Chell says. He points to Mr. Adams’s Partnership Assistance for Transit Homelessness (PATH) program, a co-response outreach initiative that partners NYPD Transit Bureau officers with trained clinicians to provide social services like mental health care and meals to unhoused New Yorkers living in the subways.Within its first year, Mr. Adams said in October, the program delivered care to more than 6,100 New Yorkers and made over 20,100 “contacts” with individuals in need. Mr. Chell, a close ally of Mr. Adams, credits the outgoing mayor’s “legally aggressive” approach with driving down the number of quality of life crimes. “He was a crime-fighting mayor and he allowed us to do our jobs,” Mr. Chell says. From when Ms. Tisch named Mr. Chell as the NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed cop in January to his retirement in October, the city experienced a 4 percent drop in most major crimes compared to the same period last year. This included a 17 percent drop in murders and, most notably, the lowest number of shooting incidents and shooting victims in recorded history. Mr. Chell has himself become the subject of controversy. On Monday, he was awarded an annual $296,000 disability pension. A Democratic city councilman from Brooklyn, Lincoln Restler, called the pension “an absurd waste of taxpayer dollars” and demanded an immediate review of the pension’s “appropriateness.”Mr. Chell was also named in a former interim NYPD commissioner’s lawsuit accusing the department of operating like a “racketeering enterprise” at the behest of Mr. Adams. And he was accused in a report from the DOI Office of the Investigator-NYPD of “unprofessional” conduct on social media, including a spat with a Democratic council member from Queens, Tiffany Caban.“I wasn’t going to let that slide,” he says of Ms. Caban’s post accusing the NYPD of employing “authoritarian” tactics at Columbia University. In response, Mr. Chell called her statement “garbage.”“I was so incensed by her tweet, by her calling us fascists, that I had to do what I had to do,” Mr. Chell says. “You’re not going to use us as the punching bag.”Other controversies include a report that in 2013 the NYPD docked him 10 vacation days for using a false name to avoid paying federal income taxes on money made from refereeing basketball games.In 2017, a Brooklyn civil jury awarded $1.5 million to the family of Ortanzso Bovell, who in 2008 was fatally shot by Mr. Chell, then the head of the Brooklyn South Auto Larceny Squad, as Bovell was escaping in a stolen car. Witness accounts, the NYPD and the King’s County DA’s office at the time ruled the shooting an accident and did not pursue charges against him. Mr. Chell declined to comment about the case.Today, Mr. Chell is working as a risk management specialist. But he is concerned about the future of the NYPD in light of the coming election. Even if Mr. Mamdani wins, Mr. Chell believes, history has shown that mayors sometimes temper their views once they assume office. Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, brought in William Bratton, an advocate of the so-called “Stop and Frisk” strategies that Mr. de Blasio campaigned against during the mayoral race. “Candidates say what they have to say for their base. Then they realize the biggest, or the best, agency they have is the NYPD. Sometimes they tend to come to the center,” Mr. Chell says. “It remains to be seen. Based on what Mamdani’s been saying, it’s highly concerning.”

‘We’re Doomed’: Former NYPD Chief Sounds Alarm on Potential Mamdani Agenda

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