Democratic mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and his comrades at the Democratic Socialists of America want to wipe out the enforcement of all misdemeanor offenses, The Post has learned.
In its most recent platform, the group blasts policing and detention as “instruments of class war” designed to “guarantee the domination of the working class” — and demands an end what it calls “the criminalization of working-class survival.”
“For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms throughout society,” according to the national party’s latest platform, adopted in 2021.
On the campaign trail, Mamdani has repeatedly called for police to stop focusing on what he’s referred to as “non serious crimes.”
“Police have a critical role to play but right now we’re relying on them to deal with the failures of our social safety net, which is preventing them from doing their actual jobs,” he said in a campaign video posted to X Wednesday.
The DSA has also pushed to slash arrests, gut prosecutors’ budgets, abolish cash bail and all forms of pre-trial detention, scrap electronic monitoring, and end imprisonment for parole violations.
Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman and member of the NYC chapter of the DSA and its endorsed mayoral candidate, has questioned the purpose of prisons and repeatedly called to roll back punishment on so-called “non-violent offenses” – both as an Albany lawmaker and in his Gotham mayoral campaign.
He doubled down on his longstanding push to legalize prostitution this week.
On the campaign trail, Mamdani backtracked from his prior ‘defund the police’ views in the wake of the Park Avenue massacre, insisting he’d keep the NYPD roughly at its current size and redirect officers to focus only on “serious” crimes.
Critics remain unconvinced he can lead law enforcement and tame NYC crime.
“I don’t buy for a second that he is moderated on any of these policing questions because he has yet to really articulate in any deep way why he’s moderated or how he’s moderated,” said Rafael Mangual, a legal policy expert at the Manhattan Institute. “All he has really said is that he no longer wants to defund the police, even though police and prison and jail abolition are core tenets of the DSA party platform.”
And Mamdani has even tried to challenge the definition of a violent offense.
“What violent crime is – is defined by the state,” he said at a 2021 protest outside the Manhattan DA’s office to nix cash bail and shut down Rikers – a promise he’s still making. ” Violence is an artificial construction,” he said at the time.
The misdemeanors the DSA wants to erase aren’t minor slip-ups. In the Empire State, they include theft or shoplifting up to $1,000, drug possession, assault without a weapon and even driving while intoxicated.
“They’re driving the city into a hole that’s never going to recover,” said Susan Ginsburg, a resident of Greenwich Village, which has descended into a lawless drug den since soft on crime policies created what neighbors have decried as a revolving door of justice.
“People will break the law with impunity. There has to be deterrent for breaking the law,” she said.
“It’s astonishing that we’re even having this conversation,” said Maria Danzilo, an Upper West Side resident who ran in the Democratic primary for state Senate in 2022 and founded the group One City Rising.
“Everybody is so sick and tired of this, and we just want to have a normal, functional, reasonable way of getting through our day without worrying about being hurt. This is exactly the opposite of what New Yorkers need right now.”
To end misdemeanor arrests, Albany would have to pass a bill decriminalizing or downgrading those charges.
Gov. Hochul – who has yet to endorse her fellow Democrat – doesn’t back defunding the police.
If elected mayor, Mamdani can’t change state laws, but does have influence over how they’re enforced. He could force the NYPD to deprioritize certain arrests or pressure district attorneys not to prosecute certain cases – much like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg did in his controversial “day one” memo telling staff to go soft on armed robberies and drug dealing.
“That will create an EZ-Pass for criminals, enabling them to repeatedly commit misdemeanor crimes,” lambasted Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa. “This will make the police even less effective at enforcement. Ultimately, this will cause the quality of life to decline dramatically, leading to a breakdown of law and order and resulting in chaos and disorder.”
New Yorkers like Chelsea resident Alexander Kaplan are stunned by the pro-crime push.
“It’s just difficult to imagine how adults in their right mind could come up with it. I’m not exaggerating, I’m completely serious,” he said. “We’re already suffering from terrible crime. This is going to make it a thousand times worse. And perception matters – just the notion of this would embolden criminals.”
Mamdani’s campaign and the DSA did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
