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Domestic violence survivors and advocates are speaking out after far-left New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s past comments opposing sending police to respond to domestic violence resurfaced.
“Police do not create safety… there are so many responsibilities we’ve given to police that, frankly, should have nothing to do with their departments… 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,” Mamdani said on the Immigrantly podcast in July 2020, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Mamdani’s comments came shortly after George Floyd’s death engulfed the nation in a fever of anti-police riots and sentiment among the left. Domestic violence advocates are sounding the alarm about Mamdani’s comments, warning that if the left-wing mayoral candidate follows through on these policies, lives could be endangered.
“There’s a lot of humans who are victims in the city of New York, and they need protection because sometimes it’s a matter of life and death. They’re hiding in the bathroom with their children, and they need someone to come immediately,” Michelle Esquenazi, founder of the Victims Rights Reform Council, told Fox News Digital.
Zohran Mamdani at the June 24, 2025 NYC mayor debate, left, NYPD car, right. (Getty)
The democratic socialist, who was first elected to the New York state legislature in 2020, has a long history of calls to defund the police.
In 2020, Mamdani called to defund the police multiple times and called the NYPD “wicked and corrupt.” Mamdani’s campaign website calls for the establishment of the “Department of Community Safety”, which his website claims will take on certain responsibilities currently delegated to the police.
However, at a mayoral debate last month, Mamdani denied that he would defund the police, and vowed instead to “work with the police,” and use mental health counselors and social workers to address homelessness and the mentally ill.
For Esquenazi, Mamdani’s past comments hit home because she claims the NYPD saved her when her ex-husband attacked her in their Queens home while she was pregnant in 1993.
“I called 911, and they came running. They made sure that me and my children, and I was pregnant at the time, were safe. One of the officers took us to a back bedroom and made sure that we were calmed down and made sure that we had what we needed. They separated him from the situation immediately and essentially saved our lives,” Esquenazi told Fox News Digital.
“If Mamdani puts in any sort of barrier to victims getting immediate help from NYPD, then many lives will be lost,” she said.
Jennifer Harrison, also a domestic violence survivor and executive director of the Victims Rights Reform Council and founder of Victims Rights New York, echoed Esquenazi’s warnings that women’s lives would be in danger if the NYPD was prevented from responding to domestic violence calls.
“It would definitely make women less safe… we’ve already tried their experiments, and they’re failing epically. These are all smokescreens and pipe dreams,” Harrison told Fox News Digital.
Harrison said that she needed police, fearing for her life, when her boyfriend had a mental health crisis in 2017, in which he smashed her and her son’s iPads and threatened to kill himself while preventing them from leaving their Suffolk County, NY home.
Mamdani made the comments after George Floyd’s death plunged the U.S. into massive displays against policing. (Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images)
RESURFACED VIDEO SHOWS ZOHRAN MAMDANI SAYING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE WOULDN’T BE A PRIORITY FOR THE NYPD
The police brought her boyfriend to the hospital, seeing he needed mental health treatment, but the hospital discharged him mere hours later. However, a cop was notified and tipped off Harrison that her enraged boyfriend was on his way back home — giving her and her son time to escape.
“That cop probably saved my life… I don’t think we should be playing Russian roulette with the lives of domestic violence victims,” Harrison told Fox News Digital.
Republican candidate for mayor Curtis Sliwa blasted Mamdani when reached for comment by Fox News Digital.
“Women will die, and children will die. He has no idea what goes on, he’s either hopelessly naive, or he hates the police so much he doesn’t care,” Sliwa told Fox News Digital.
Multiple domestic violence survivors credited the NYPD with saving their lives. (YUKI IWAMURA/AFP via Getty Images)
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Sonia Ossorio, Executive Director of National Organization for Women NYC, said that women’s lives are “at stake,” and she pointed out that having unarmed first responders attend to domestic violence situations could put them in harm’s way.
“The number one cause of death and major injury for women in this country is done at the hands of their intimate partner. So fast response by law enforcement that is trained and has the resources to intervene in major situations is critical,” she told Fox News Digital.
“What are we saying about women’s safety about the endemic of domestic violence if we are even hinting at the idea that police response is not a priority?”
A 2021 study published by the World Journal of Psychiatry found that domestic violence is the “leading cause of homicide death for women” and found that 30% of women experience domestic partner violence, which is often called “intimate partner violence.”
Mamdani and two of his rivals in the NYC mayoral race, Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo, did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.