In one of the least surprising developments since Zohran Mamdani won election to become mayor of New York City, the New York Post is reporting that the exodus of NYPD cops is already beginning. The Post reports that there was already a surge in police officers resigning or taking retirement in the month prior to election day.
The NYPD saw a 35% hike in cops of all ranks leaving in October – 245 police officers compared to 181 in the same month last year, according to Police Pension Fund data.
’Morale is down because everyone is concerned about the policies Mamdani wants to put in place,’ said Detectives Endowment Association President Scott Munro.
This is in response to comments Mamdani has made during his campaign, where he said he would get rid of New York’s Strategic Response Group (SRG), which handles crowd control when there are riots, protests, “civil disorders,” and big events. You often see them clad with neon-green and black uniforms, sometimes riding on bicycles or using bicycles for crowd control. SRG is housed within New York’s Special Operations Bureau.
According to the Post, Mamdani has also said he plans to empower the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) to become the “decision-maker in police complaint cases.” CCRB is an independent civilian oversight agency that is charged with investigating allegations of police misconduct.
The Post added that compounding the “plummeting post-Election Day morale is that Mamdani has also said he would create a new Department of Community Safety (DCS) that would dispatch mental health professionals to 911 calls about people in crisis, rather than cops.
“’How’s that going to work when the person pulls out a gun or a knife?’ a Bronx cop pondered.”
Zohran Mamdani screams like a lunatic at Tom Homan.
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) October 3, 2025
pic.twitter.com/tbQgQYazOj
In related news, on the day after Mamdani won the mayoral race, SRG Commanding Officer Deputy Chief John D’Adamo announced his plans to retire.
The New York Daily News is reporting that law enforcement agencies in other cities, and in the federal government, facing shortages of their own, are now recruiting disaffected NYPD officers.
“The controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is running a recruitment campaign targeting potentially disgruntled NYPD officers offering them a home that ‘respects you, your family and your commitment to law enforcement,’” reported the Daily News.
ICE is using a novel combination of traditional advertising and social media to recruit experienced NYPD officers.
In addition, Houston Texas has joined the party. Houston posted a Facebook ad that specifically says: "NYPD, are you disgusted with the election of Zohran Mamdani?…Join us. The Houston Police Department is hiring police officers.”
It’s not just advertising. Houston is offering incentives to would-be Houston police officers that include $50,000 in signing bonus money, affordable housing, and as the Daily News reports, “a ‘supportive mayor and city council,’ and a police chief who is ‘a retired Texas Ranger, not a politician.’”
In terms of numbers, the city is budgeted to employ 35,000 police officers, but it hasn’t hit that threshold in at least five years, according to police unions and city officials.
Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) union, has said that an average of 316 police officers has left the department or taken retirement every month of 2025. He has said the city is on pace to lose almost 1,900 officers before it can onboard the 1,100 new officers who are training at the police academy right now.
Data from the city’s Independent Budget Office, which tracks staffing, reveals that new hires have struggled to keep pace with the law enforcement work force drain caused by departures. The current uniformed total of active-duty officers is 33,745. Last year, the number was 33,812.
“Recruiting ads targeting New York City police officers are nothing new – we’ve been seeing them for years, Hendry told the Daily News. “Every law enforcement agency in the country knows that our members are overworked, underpaid and subjected to endless demonization and second-guessing. We need our city leaders to work with us on fixing those issues. Otherwise, more talented cops will walk out the door.”
Perhaps one retired police officer summed it all up when he told the Post, “How do you work for somebody who considers you racist and anti-queer and wants to defund the police?...Things are hard enough already. If you’re eligible to leave, why would you want to stay in that situation?”
Mamdani is a notorious law enforcement antagonist who has called police racist and called for defunding the police.
Zohran Mamdani: “I never said that I want to defund the police.”
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) October 26, 2025
Zohran Mamdani 👇 pic.twitter.com/LhatM4MqJB
One of the more blatant contradictions for liberals, and in this case Democratic Socialists, is how much they rely on a police force to enforce their unpopular policies and dictates, while at the same time they constantly and aggressively undermine and marginalize the same police department on matters of public safety.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Mamdani institute an active police recruitment campaign, targeting groups who are on the same page with him from a political and ideological perspective. These people would replace the New Yorkers who have populated the NYPD to this point: people who are patriots, and who have believed in the higher calling of their work and the untapped potential for their city.
Nothing Mamdani is doing is unplanned. He has a plan. And now we’re about to find out what that is.
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