Mayor Zahran Mamdani broke with his far-left base of the Democratic Socialists of America — and scored a win for police unions by backing legislation that would shore up cop pensions and raise the NYPD retirement age.
Progressive city council members had pledged not to support the two state bills, which would require letters of support for “home rule” from Big Apple voters to pass in Albany.
“The progressives were digging, and the votes weren’t there,” a council source told the newspaper.
Legislation backed by the police union would raise the mandatory retirement age for most NYPD officers from 62 to 65, allowing them to stay on the job longer. It would also boost pensions by allowing officers to base them on any of their last three years of employment, rather than just their last year on the job.
Mamdani on Wednesday issued a last-minute “letter of necessity,” lowering the voting threshold for how much support is needed for bills in the Assembly in order for them to pass.
A spokesman for Mamdani said the mayor had sent his support at the council’s request. NYPD union leaders also pressured him to intervene, council sources said.
In 2022, left-wing council members, led by Mamdani’s DSA colleague Tiffany Cabane, successfully killed similar measures by abstaining, leaving the legislation four votes away from passing, City & State reported. a report From that time.
Then-Mayor Eric Adams did not issue a letter of necessity to help advance the bill to the highest levels, citing budgetary concerns.
However, during Adams’ tenure as mayor, the NYC-DSA accused him of inflating the NYPD’s budget at the expense of other social service programs.
But when Mamdani signaled his support for the bills, many progressives in the chamber followed suit. Council members voted to uphold pro-police home rule letters overwhelmingly, so much so that the low vote threshold in Mamdani’s letter of necessity did not matter.
“They realize that opposing everything related to the NYPD for the sake of opposition accomplishes nothing,” said one unnamed council member.
The council agreed to support raising the mandatory retirement age for officers by a vote of 47 to 2, with council members Cabane and Althea Stevens voting no, and Jennifer Gutierrez and Chi Oseh abstaining.
The Council also approved support for more generous pensions for the NYPD by a vote of 42 to 5, with Council Members Cabán, Stevens, Alexa Aviles, Crystal Hudson, and Lincoln Rustler none and Gutierrez, Sandy Nurse, and Julie Won abstaining; Ossé is absent again.
Both projects would require local rule requests from New York City in order to advance in Albany.
Mamdani, during last year’s mayoral campaign, distanced himself from the “defund the police” position he championed while a state Assemblyman — echoing similar cries as fellow socialists demanding cuts to the NYPD’s budget.
One of the planks of his campaign was to eliminate police overtime entirely and use the money to support a new agency that would replace cops with social workers in responding to mental health calls. That agency has not yet come to fruition.
Mamdani also faced heavy criticism during his mayoral run for his past comments against the NYPD, including calling cops racist and homophobic.
A spokesman for the city’s mayor said the administration supported the bill package to keep veteran police officers longer, adding that the measures would save the city money in the long term, without elaborating.
But Restler, the council’s Progressive Caucus member, who broke with the mayor over a police pension bill, told The Washington Post that the council would do the opposite.
“The second bill represents a continuation of a system with perverse incentives where city workers try to work overtime at the end of their careers, and I didn’t think it was a fiscally responsible policy,” he claimed.
The mayor’s reversal left some City Hall insiders wondering whether he was willing to abandon his previous rhetoric when it was politically expedient to do so.
“It’s like we’re defunding the police or is it a necessity? I can’t remember — maybe the mayor can tell me,” one council member joked.
The mayor had previously broken with his DSA allies when he reappointed Jessica Tesch to the position of police commissioner.
Tisch, a Jew and prominent Jewish Zionist from New York, has been at the center of attacks by the city’s Socialist Club, including over her calls to roll back a number of the government’s criminal justice reforms starting in 2019.