Top moderate Democrats, notably women, have more to worry about in New York City’s socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani than his openly-communist sentiments, such as “seizing the means of production.”
The anti-cop candidate has said he doesn’t think the boys in blue should handle domestic violence calls. Instead, under Mamdani’s plan, if the violent husband or boyfriend is beating the daylights out of a wife or girlfriend, Mamdani will, presumably, send in the headshrinkers. How the skull doctors will handle a 6-foot-3-inch, 230-pound drunk is unclear.
Though Mamdani’s plan to permit social workers to handle some if not most 911 calls is well known, the latest on the radical candidate — that he doesn’t believe they should answer domestic violence calls — shows up in a podcast from 2020.
“Crisis Responders”
The Washington Free Beacon disinterred Mamdani’s remarks on the Immigrantly podcast, an appropriate venue for Mamdani, a Uganda-born Indian who has been a “citizen” less than a decade, and whose radical Marxist parents have enkindled a burning hatred of Israel in their boy.
His comments on domestic violence are “a wide-ranging denunciation of the NYPD” on the podcast, the website reported. Said Mamdani:
If somebody is jaywalking, if somebody is surviving, going through domestic violence — there are so many different, different situations that would be far better handled by people trained to deal with those specific situations, as opposed to an individual with a gun.
How jaywalking compares to a man beating a woman to a pulp is something of a mystery. But anyway, the suggestion that social workers — his platform calls them “crisis responders” — will respond to “mental health” calls is a key plank of the “community safety” section of his platform.
Neither Mamdani nor his handlers commented for the Free Beacon. The president of the Big Apple chapter of the National Organization for Women did comment.
“Domestic violence cases are often the most high-lethality cases where police response is urgently needed,” chapter president Sonia Ossorio told the website:
The idea of removing police protection is outrageous. It’s yet another example of his views of policing that are uninformed and dangerous.
Dangerous might be an understatement if Mamdani really plans to send “crisis responders” to handle a murderous beating in progress.
110,000 Calls
“A 2021 World Journal of Psychiatry study found that ‘intimate partner violence’ is the ‘leading cause of homicide death for women’ in the United States and presents a heightened risk for women between the ages of 18 and 24, women from racial and ethnic minority groups, and women with mental and physical disabilities,” the website noted.
In 2024, city cops logged “more than 110,000 domestic violence incidents,” the website reported. And Pete Panuccio, former homicide detective, thinks not sending cops to answer domestic violence calls is “absolutely insane.”
“Homicide rates will increase, women will be pulverized,” he told the website:
Let’s face it, 99 percent of the injuries inflicted were usually by men on women. There will be no defense for at-risk people. I’ve been in this bad movie before.
Whether Mamdani stands by the comments is unclear, the website reported on X.
Islamic Teaching
Not to be ignored as a possible factor in the “absolutely insane” remark is Mamdani’s religion. Islam teaches that men must admonish and chastise “disobedient” wives.
“Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God has gifted the one above the other, and on account of the outlay they make from their substance for them,” one English translation of 4:34 in the Koran says:
Virtuous women are obedient, careful, during the husband’s absence, because God has of them been careful. But chide those for whose refractoriness you have cause to fear; remove them into beds apart, and scourge them: but if they are obedient to you, then seek not occasion against them. [Emphasis added.]
Myriad YouTube videos feature Muslim clerics giving instructions for wife beating.
“This is Sharia law,” X user Dr. Maalouf wrote over a screenshot of the New York Post’s headline on its story about Mamdani’s comments. “Husbands are allowed to beat their wives.”
Anti-cop Mamdani
Mamdani’s views on wife-beating aside, his anti-cop platform rightly has sane Democrats worried. He would create a Department of Community Safety that will “fill in the gaps” of city services.
“Its mission will be to prevent violence before it happens by taking a public health approach to safety,” the campaign website says:
That requires us to reconcile the fact that violence is highly concentrated in working class neighborhoods in our city. The Department of Community Safety (DCS) will prioritize prevention-first, community-based solutions which have been consistently shown to better improve safety.
The new department’s “focuses” will be homelessness, mental health, subway safety, and hate violence. The city police department will come under the supervision of the new community safety department.
“We need a system that enables and empowers New Yorkers to request non-NYPD crisis response in both emergencies and non-emergencies, empowers dispatchers to route calls to these crisis teams, and does not interfere with violent emergencies, fires, etc. from receiving a swift and appropriate response,” a footnote says.
One problem for Mamdani: In 2020, the same year that he said that cops shouldn’t handle domestic violence and likened the crime to jaywalking, he was very clear about his view of them.
“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety,” he fumed on X:
What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD. …
NO to fake cuts – defund the police.
