<\/p>\n
New York City<\/span> Mayor Zohran Mamdani never quite promised<\/a> to reform the police.<\/p>\n Any such undertaking would always have been fraught with potential traps. For the city\u2019s first democratic socialist<\/a> mayor, changes to criminal policy would have made Mamdani a prime target for conservative backlash. It\u2019s a well-worn playbook: He would be blamed for any level of crime in the city. The mayor and his allies, even among them advocates hoping he\u2019d go further to curb police abuse, understood the threat well.<\/p>\n Still, Mamdani had little trouble during his bombshell campaign convincing leftists that his sweeping vision for a socialist-governed metropolis included criminal policy reforms that would satiate them.<\/p>\n He promised to eliminate some of the most notorious of the New York Police Department\u2019s institutions \u2014 a widely criticized gang database and infamous Strategic Response Group<\/a>, which responds to protests<\/a> and whose officers<\/a> have histories of higher complaint<\/a> rates. Mamdani outlined an ambitious vision to divert police away from responding to mental health crises, proposing an Office of Community Safety.<\/p>\n New data on how much the New York City is spending to pay for police misconduct, however, has heightened concerns among advocates that paltry rate of changes to policing under Mamdani could lead to even higher payouts in coming years. The first six months of the Mamdani administration saw $53 million in police misconduct settlements, according to an analysis of NYPD data by the public defense group Legal Aid Society.<\/p>\n If the figures continue to grow at that rate under Mamdani, it will make 2026 the fourth year in a row that police misconduct settlements top $100 million.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to see these numbers continue to balloon absent a new course from the administration.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The payouts under Mamdani so far cover conduct that took place under his predecessor Eric Adams\u2019s administration, but criminal policy experts worry that, without major changes to policing, the new mayor will put the city on the hook for similar payouts in the future. That\u2019s especially true if he maintains an approach to policing that they say is not all that different from the policies he campaigned against.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is concerning is that if we don\u2019t see the kind of shift in tactics away from the kind of NYPD activity that has been driving these misconduct complaints and settlements, we\u2019re going to see these numbers continue to balloon absent a new course from the administration,\u201d said Michael Sisitzky, assistant policy director at the New York Civil Liberties Union.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The settlements represent the kinds of abuses of aggressive enforcement of \u201cquality of life\u201d policing and the deployment of specialized units like the Strategic Response Group that characterized<\/a> the Adams administration<\/a>, Sisitzky added.<\/p>\n \u201cThose have yet to really be reined in under the Mamdani administration,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, while he can\u2019t be held directly responsible for all of the numbers reflected in this first tranche of data in terms of settlements payouts, we\u2019re going to continue to see large volumes of complaints being filed, of settlements being reached, unless we see a change in tactics and a shift away from the kind of policing policies that drove these settlements in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n Even as Mamdani made campaign promises on policing, he went out of his way not to bash the NYPD or offer too much specificity about addressing the department\u2019s biggest issues. During the election, that didn\u2019t worry too many of his supporters. There was too much at stake for purity tests. Let him win first, many criminal justice advocates thought<\/a> \u2014 and then they\u2019d see what he could do.<\/p>\n The steps Mamdani has taken on criminal policy seem tailored to avoiding political pitfalls.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n While, as mayor, Mamdani takes his biggest swings at the city\u2019s billionaire class, the steps he has taken on criminal policy seem tailored to avoiding political pitfalls.<\/p>\n Along the way, he has notched small victories. He made progress on police body cameras and cutting down on low-level cycling offenses. Pushing to close the jails on Rikers Island<\/a>, he has opened alternatives to jails and shut down<\/a> a vacant one. Though he ended his pause on sweeps of encampments for the unhoused, he ordered that they be led by homeless service workers. And he installed the first permanent chair<\/a> of the NYPD\u2019s oversight body in six years.<\/p>\n Nine months into Mamdani\u2019s first year in office, however, the NYPD itself has changed little.<\/p>\n Mamdani\u2019s office declined to comment but provided background information on what it said were his criminal policy accomplishments, including a budget increase for a police oversight board.<\/p>\n One of the things reform advocates were mostly able to set aside during Mamdani\u2019s campaign was his pledge to keep on Adams\u2019s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch.<\/p>\n The daughter of a prominent New York family of billionaires, Tisch was first appointed by Adams. With crime rates falling and her tenure at the NYPD winning plaudits from the likes of Donald Trump<\/a> to the American Enterprise Institute,<\/a> Mamdani pledged during his campaign to keep her on.<\/p>\n Widely viewed as a political play, the move alarmed many reformers, who voiced criticisms but held out hope that Mamdani\u2019s proposals would at least start a long project of changing policing from the bottom up, despite Tisch\u2019s perch at the top.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of backtracking on promises without any kind of affirmative vision for what policing could look like.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n With Tisch helming Mamdani\u2019s NYPD, however, reformers\u2019 fears have been borne out. The department has continued to pursue what Tisch describes as \u201cquality of life<\/a>\u201d crimes \u2014 just the kinds of crime Mamdani campaigned on diverting police away from \u2014 and what reform advocates like Sisitzky say is a continuation of the failed \u201cbroken windows<\/a>\u201d policing fads of 1980s and \u201990s. The strategy\u2019s inherent focus on the most visible issues like panhandling, public urination, and sleeping on the subway effectively criminalizes poverty while letting violent crime and its root causes go largely untouched.<\/p>\n \u201cThe main critique is: There\u2019s been a lot of backtracking on promises without any kind of affirmative vision for what policing could look like in his administration,\u201d said Amanda Jack, director of policy for criminal law reform at the Legal Aid Society. \u201cIt has all been deference to Tisch.\u201d<\/p>\n The NYPD\u2019s focus on those \u201cquality of life\u201d offenses also looks little different from its approach under Adams. Data from the NYPD\u2019s first quarter under Mamdani \u201cwas a continuation of broken windows policing, and, in some cases, an expansion,\u201d Sisitzky said.<\/p>\n During his four years in office, Adams oversaw a surge in enforcement<\/a> of low-level offenses. Mamdani\u2019s first quarter in office saw more criminal summonses in that category than the first quarter of 2025 under Adams, temporarily driven by increased enforcement against people being in a park unauthorized or biking on the sidewalk. Toward the end of Mamdani\u2019s first quarter, he announced that the NYPD would stop issuing<\/a> criminal summonses for minor traffic offenses for cyclists.<\/p>\n Arrests for other offenses like subway fare evasion<\/a> are on a similar track: During the first quarter of the year, Mamdani\u2019s NYPD arrested 3,188 people for not paying the subway fare, down from 3,696 such arrests during the same period of Adams\u2019s last year in office. Many of the subway arrests, Sisitzky said, focused on people without housing.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an administration that promised, at least during the campaign, that they were going to be taking a fairer, more equitable, more justice-oriented approach to policing,\u201d Sisitzky said. \u201cAnd we haven\u2019t seen that translate into a meaningful shift away from the \u2018broken windows\u2019 approach that has long subjected New Yorkers to racially biased policing.\u201d<\/p>\n While making New York a sanctuary for immigrants is a centerpiece of Mamdani\u2019s agenda, continuing the kinds of enforcement practices that disproportionately bring immigrants into contact with police make them more vulnerable to Trump\u2019s mass deportation machine, said Yasmine Farhang, executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project.<\/p>\n \u201cIncreased NYPD policing necessarily increases the risk of ICE policing for non-citizens,\u201d Farhang told The Intercept. When an immigrant has an encounter with a police officer for any reason, \u201ctheir risk of getting later funneled into detentions, deportations, increases regardless of the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if no one is charged with a crime, if they are fingerprinted<\/a> by police, those fingerprints are sent through a state criminal system shared with the FBI, which is shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. \u201cThat pipeline of fingerprint sharing from the point of NYPD to ICE happens right now just by default.\u201d<\/p>\n Mamdani supports policies that protect immigrants, and his former colleagues in Albany are pushing state-level sanctuary laws, but those efforts mean little if they aren\u2019t paired with changes that reduce encounters with police.<\/p>\n \u201cThe risk is increased,\u201d Farhang said, \u201cof ICE identifying and targeting someone, whether or not a local agency is actively colluding with them or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the biggest disappointments for criminal justice advocates who support Mamdani are his abandonment of promises to deal with some of the city\u2019s most heavy-handed policing.<\/p>\n During the campaign, Mamdani said he would get rid of the NYPD gang database<\/a> and its Strategic Response Group, as well as standing against the sweeps of homeless encampments. Instead of following through, Mamdani implemented gang database reforms, left the Strategic Response Group in place, and walked back his pledge to end the encampment sweeps.<\/p>\n The Strategic Response Group, which is known for brutal crackdowns<\/a> on protests from Black Lives Matter to campus<\/a> movements against the genocide in Gaza<\/a>, is also a major source of the conduct the city is paying so much for<\/a>.<\/p>\n When asked<\/a> Monday about his administration footing the bill for a new lawsuit<\/a> over the Strategic Response Group\u2019s conduct, Mamdani said the allegations were \u201cincredibly troubling.\u201d He restated his commitment to \u201cdecoupling\u201d the response to terrorism, which is in SRG\u2019s remit, from the response to the First Amendment-protected protesting<\/a>.<\/p>\n Without substantive shifts on how police operate, criminal justice advocates said, the city will continue to pay out big settlements.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s just a cycle of impunity that is ever-present in the NYPD,\u201d said Divad Durant, a member of the Justice Committee, an organization that fights police violence in New York City. \u201cAnd the lack of discipline is what keeps this cycle going.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
More Broken Windows<\/h2>\n
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\u201cDeference to Tisch\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Deportation Pipeline<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Gangs and Goons<\/strong><\/h2>\n