'The least qualified candidate'

Bernard Whalen is a former NYPD lieutenant and the co-author of “The NYPD’s First Fifty Years” and “Case Files of the NYPD.”

It’s clear that mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is the leader of the pack when it comes to capturing young people’s attention in the mayoral race. His savvy use of social media has propelled him from a little-known Assembly member to the Democratic nominee for mayor overnight, and it now appears that many of the old guard are ready to jump on his bandwagon. 

The problem is that his enthusiastic supporters are rushing headfirst to vote for him before using their heads to fully understand what he wants to do if elected. The fact is, there is virtually no difference from what he is proposing to than what is already in place. One glaring example that bears close examination is Mamdani’s pledge to create yet another huge city bureaucracy at the taxpayers’ expense called the Department of Community Safety. 

It sounds innocuous enough, but the name is a misnomer. It will not make the community safer because it is breaking no new ground.

According to his website, the proposed agency’s stated mission will simply overlap functions already performed by other city agencies. Mamdani wants the Department of Community Safety to reduce homelessness, but the city already has a Department of Homeless Services dedicated to the exact same work. Mamdani wants the Department of Community Safety to invest (whatever that means) in citywide mental health education and services, but there already is a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and a Mayoral Office of Community Mental Health that provides citywide mental education and health services. 

Mamdani also wants the Department of Community Safety to address hate-based violence, but there already is a mayoral agency, the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, that tackles hate violence. He wants the Department of Community Safety to improve subway and street safety. Has he forgotten that the city has a large highly trained Police Department, often considered the best in the nation, with its own Transit Bureau that has made, when allowed to do its job, New York, the largest safe city in the country.

Mamdani and his ilk are of the mindset that he can wave a magic wand and create a super agency to cure the city’s ills. If this sounds familiar, it should. In the past, various politicians have couched similar grand schemes with terms like reengineering, reimagining, rethinking, reassessing and or recreating. The problem is that none of those ideas have worked in the past. The reason is simple: They do not address the root problems.  

The vast majority of homeless on the street are mentally unstable. But there is no provision for long-term care or places for them to live other than the streets. How can he promise to do something about hate crimes when he has made statements that have been construed as anti-Semitic and anti-white. 

In the past he has called the NYPD racist and supported the defund the police movement. Of course, he has walked back those statements but has yet to apologize for them. What exactly does he think a brand-new Department of Community Safety can do to improve subway safety? Again, no explanation for how this will be accomplished. 

Zohran Mamdani may be the least qualified candidate to run for mayor since Robert Van Wyck. The time to ask him tough questions is before the votes are cast, not after.