Mamdani Won’t Defund the Police. The Movement Can Grow With Him Anyway.

Zohran Mamdani arrives outside the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York City on August 07, 2025. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Mychal Denzel Smith is the author of Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream , winner of the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.

“I am not running to defund the police,” Zohran Mamdani said in late July, after visiting with the family of the slain police officer Didarul Islam. It was consistent with the stance he’s maintained throughout the New York City mayoral race. His campaign has remained focused on his signature issue—the city’s affordability crisis—and he has not run, in either his successful Democratic primary or the upcoming general election, on a platform of defunding the police .

This fact has not stopped Mamdani’s oppon