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Advocates say Mayor Mamdani's NYPD isn't curbing broken-windows policing
By
Ben Feuerherd
Published Aug 13, 2026
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Ben Feuerherd / Gothamist
By
Ben Feuerherd
Published Aug 13, 2026
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Elected officials and police reform advocates on Thursday called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to rein in what they call a continuation of broken windows policing under his administration, after they watched criminal court arraignments across the city over several days this week.
City Councilmember Sandy Nurse joined the advocates in front of Manhattan Supreme Court on Centre Street, and said she would keep the pressure on City Hall to enact policies that keep New Yorkers out of jail.
“ We're gonna keep holding this administration accountable,” Nurse said. “We love an allied mayor … but we have to continue to hold everybody accountable.”
The outcry comes as Mamdani has faced repeated criticism from progressive advocates over how he has governed the city on public safety. When he was running for office, Mamdani said a top priority of his administration would be to create a Department of Community Safety that would shift some responsibilities away from NYPD officers to allow them to focus on solving the most serious crimes committed in the city.
Since taking office, Mamdani has announced a pared-down version of the department, but has also said it will eventually scale up. The mayor has also repeatedly distanced himself from his past statements that called for defunding the NYPD — including as recently as this week. And as mayor, he also kept Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, an Eric Adams appointee who critics say has continued quality-of-life policing in the same manner as seen throughout Adams’ administration.
Gothamist previously reported that criminal summonses that include quality-of-life infractions like public drinking jumped 29% in the first three months of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025. Last year, the number of New Yorkers arrested for taking up more than one seat on the subway jumped 3,000% — a trend that continued in the first months of the Mamdani administration.
An NYPD spokesperson said the department has made significant efforts to reduce the amount of low-level arrests over the course of about 15 years. From 2010 through 2018, there’s been a 50% decrease in misdemeanor arrests, the spokesperson said. But since the end of the pandemic, the amount of misdemeanor arrests has held steady at levels seen in 2018, according to the spokesperson.
At an unrelated press conference Thursday, Mamdani defended Tisch’s management of the NYPD and said he looked forward to reviewing the findings of the advocates who watched arraignments this week.
“I would not have someone serving our city if I was not confident in what they were doing,” Mamdani said of Tisch. City Hall, asked for comment, referred to the mayor’s public statements.
At the press conference in front of the courthouse, advocates from organizations including Vocal-NY, the Justice Committee, and the Legal Aid Society joined elected officials, including Councilmembers Lincoln Restler and Crystal Hudson as well as Queens Borough President Donovan Richards.
While sitting in courtrooms across the five boroughs this week, the advocates said they witnessed more than 360 arraignments, and 57% of them were for misdemeanor charges. Only 83 of the arraignments they witnessed were for felonies that could not be settled through desk appearance tickets, they said.
The cases they saw included crimes like stealing hygiene products from convenience stores and drug possession.
Samy Feliz — a police reform advocate and the brother of Allan Feliz, who was shot and killed by an NYPD officer amid a struggle during a traffic stop in 2019 — said those arrests amount to criminalizing poverty in the city. The Feliz family is suing the city over Tisch’s decision not to fire Lt. Jonathan Rivera for the shooting. Rivera testified in an NYPD trial that he shot Allan Feliz because Rivera feared Allan Feliz could run over another officer with his car, but the judge who oversaw the trial said the evidence disproved that assertion.
“ What New Yorkers saw in courtrooms this week was not a new approach to public safety that Mayor Mamdani promised during his campaign,” Samy Feliz said. It is not focusing on police resources on serious crime. It is the same aggressive, racially discriminatory enforcement of low-level offenses that we saw under Eric Adams.”
Tagged
Politics
new york city
public safety
Ben Feuerherd
Ben Feuerherd covers public safety and policing for WNYC and Gothamist. He previously covered federal courts for The New York Post and The Messenger. His work has also appeared in POLITICO, the Daily Beast and NBC New York. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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