Candidates for New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary election who once railed against police are shifting their stances amid public outrage over crime.
Zellnor Myrie, Scott Stringer and Brad Lander previously pushed to defund or restrict police after the death of George Floyd in 2020 but now focus their campaigns on supporting law enforcement, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Crime is top of mind for the election as the city has failed to bring murder rates below pre-COVID-19 levels.
The city saw 377 murders in 2024, a decrease from the prior year but above the yearly rates from 2013 through 2019, government data show. Felony assaults and motor vehicle thefts also increased in 2024. An October New York Times poll showed 27% of voters believe crime is the city’s biggest crisis and 48 percent of voters believe it “has gotten out of control.”
“The truth is that at this moment, many New Yorkers do not feel safe,” Myrie, a Democratic state senator, told the paper. “What we are feeling right now in this city is a sense of disorder in our public spaces, and I believe that our police officers play a role in keeping us safe.”
Myrie and Stringer are proposing to hire thousands of new police officers if elected, while Lander’s campaign emphasizes that “police are critical” to address “violence,” “illegal guns,” and to “solve crimes,” though he supports less reliance on police in responding to mental health crises.
“Brad believes all New Yorkers deserve to feel safe. Period,” Lander’s campaign told the New York Times.
Stringer, a former city comptroller, urged former Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio to gradually defund the New York Police Department (NYPD) by $1.1 billion in 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement rose to fame. Lander called for $1 billion budget cuts for the NYPD when he sat on the city council that year. He is the current comptroller.
Myrie chimed in during June 2020 with a bill in the state legislature to end a legal protection for police officers known as qualified immunity. He declared in May 2020, “Police brutality is in the DNA of this country and if we do not start the conversation from there I will not engage with you. Days after George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis, he declared on social media, “Police brutality is in the DNA of this country and if we do not start the conversation from there I will not engage with you.”
Police brutality is in the DNA of this country and if we do not start the conversation from there I will not engage with you.
— Senator Zellnor Y. Myrie 米维 (@zellnor4ny) May 29, 2020
Myrie’s state Senate office and Stringer and Lander’s campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment on why they shifted their stances.
The three candidates will face up against six other candidates, including incumbent Mayor Eric Adams. Lander polled above all other declared candidates at 10% this month.
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