Ex-NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly on Sunday warned it will be a “tragedy of main proportions” if metropolis voters elect socialist mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, who’s “completely unqualified” for the workplace.
Kelly — the longest-serving police commissioner in Huge Apple historical past with stints beneath Democratic Mayors Mike Bloomberg and David Dinkins — stated he’s particularly anxious Mamdani will intestine the Police Division whereas attempting to usher in “a complete checklist of wacky issues.”
“It’s a tragedy of main proportions if Mamdani is elected mayor of the best metropolis on the planet,” Kelly stated on WABC 770 AM’s the “Cats Roundtable” program.
“New York is the capital of capitalism, and to have somebody who’s so completely unqualified …
this man has mainly not had a job,” he advised Cats Roundtable host John Catsimatidis. “I’m very involved about the way forward for New York if he will get elected.
“He has a complete checklist of wacky issues that he desires to do,” Kelly stated. “It’s simply not definitely worth the probability, a roll of the cube to have a socialist mayor on this, the best metropolis in America.”
Kelly stated he’s satisfied that Mamdani, at present a state assemblyman from Queens, will take sources from the NYPD, notably mentioning the Democratic Socialist’s plan to create a separate Division of Neighborhood Security to handle the mentally ailing and homeless individuals on the streets.
“My greatest concern is the Police Division and what he would do to the division. There is no such thing as a query about it, that he must scale back the dimensions of the Police Division,” Kelly stated.
“He’ll scale back the division as a result of he desires to begin one thing daring [a new Department of Community Safety] … with no articulation as to what it means and what he’s going to do. However it does imply he’ll should take sources from the Police Division to workers that group,” the previous prime cop stated.
Kelly stated the NYPD is already hemorrhaging law enforcement officials retiring or exiting “on the highest charge” for “higher climes.”
Kelly added that Mamdani’s fondness to push socialist packages is “simply absurd.
“Who’s he going to make use of for a mannequin? Venezuela? Nicaragua?” the ex-NYPD chief stated.
“He’ll simply run out of different individuals‘s cash. That’s what occurs with socialism. It’s sure to occur in New York with an exodus of huge numbers of individuals going to sunnier climes.
“It’s so hurtful to New York to attempt to assume that sort of presidency, which is inevitable. That’s what the mayor will do. That’s what he preached his complete public life, brief as it’s,” Kelly, 83, stated of Mamdani, 33.
A big turnout on the polls in November is required to cease Mamdani, stated Kelly, who’s co-founder of the center-right group “Save Our Metropolis.
“High quality of life is essential,” he stated.
He additionally stated present Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who served beneath Kelly, has been “terrific” main the NYPD.
The Mamdani marketing campaign declined remark to The Submit on Kelly’s barbs.
However throughout a WNYC radio interview final week, Mamdani tried to stroll again his prior feedback from 2020 slamming the NYPD as “racist, anti-queer and a significant risk to public security.”
Requested if he nonetheless stood by these remarks, Mamdani stated, “No, I don’t.”
Going through demise threats, Mamdani now has an NYPD safety element defending him, after he received the first and have become the Democratic mayoral nominee within the common election.
“And I made clear in the course of the course of this marketing campaign that the NYPD and law enforcement officials basically are important companions in creating public security for each New Yorker, each one that calls this metropolis its residence,” Mamdani advised WNYC’s Brian Lehrer.
The pol stated he desires to make it simpler for officers to give attention to critical crime by creating an workplace of group security to cope with avenue people who find themselves mentally ailing or homeless, as an alternative of getting cops spend time doing social work.
Mamdani stated his notion of policing modified after turning into a state assemblyman in 2021, as he labored alongside officers within the 114th Precinct in Astoria, Queens.
