> About the only response to this stuff a reasonable person can muster is "he doesn't believe that now"
He clearly still believes in police reform. In some places that includes reducing police budgets in favor of more effective public safety programs. That's what "defund the police" means. Not "abolish", reduce funding. In NYC he's running on maintaining police funding at current levels and adding additional nonviolent peacekeeping capacity. He may personally believe that ultimately funding can be redirected further, but that's not what he's running on.
Criminal justice is majorly fucked in the US broadly. We incarcerate non-dangerous people with minor offenses way too long, and we let dangerous repeat offenders walk free. The answer isn't so simple as "lock more people up" or "let everyone go", we're in a trickier bind than a straightforward over incarceration or over lenient set of policies. Mamdani talks a lot about reducing penalties for minor nonviolent offenders, and for increasing rehabilitative capacity, but he does retreat to rehabilitation too readily (from a rhetorical efficacy perspective) when questioned about how to handle repeat offenders.
I don't think he's actually changed his values at all, he's just polished his phrasing and set more achievable near-term goals.
Yeah, I understand that's what people are saying to rationalize it. And like I said: we'll find out! But see my reply to the sibling comment, where I link directly to his words:
He's well-documented, saying many times, in many different variations, in many different places, that he wants to eliminate prisons, "dismantle" the police, and so on. One or two comments you might be able to brush aside, but this is a consistent pattern.
That's what people are saying when they say defund. Reduce funding for. Consistently this is what anyone who says defund the police has always meant. You gotta take off the tin foil hat, my guy.
"We'll find out" haha, you think he's going to shut down the nypd? They have an operating budget of what, $6 billion dollars annually?
He's not going to shut them down, you can't just stop a $6b organization. You can, however, defund it. Maybe they could do just fine with $5 billion. If the city has an extra billion to spend on building housing or improving transit or providing health care or services to the homeless... a billion dollars a year buys a lot of things.
These kinds of folk will panic over "defund the police" as if it's shutting down an entire office. Meanwhile this administration proceeds to effectively shut down the DoED in all but name and we get a shrug back.
It becomes very hard to assume good faith in such situations.
He literally, repeatedly said “defund and dismantle”. He’s not trying to be subtle. I’m not taking anything out of context. It’s obvious that he didn’t mean “reduce funding”, and while that may be what you think is reasonable, it’s not what he meant when he said it. I’ve given you the receipts.
You have to be trying really hard to interpret that in the way you’re trying to do it, “my guy.” I’m just reading his words and taking him seriously.
Oh, the answer really is “let everyone go,” and then “get rid of all billionaires, cap wealth at $100,000,000 and tax the rest at 99%, and make sure every single person has a high-quality, safe place to live, good food, medical care, and friends.
Less, much less, but not zero. You'll always have the odd person who ends up a problem even under optimal circumstances. The range of trait expression in humans is very broad, and there are a lot of humans. You can't run away from that, but you can be compassionate about it. Insisting that your socialist utopia will simply render all humans happy and harmless, and as such there will be no need for forceful law enforcement is obviously wrong and harmful to your movement.
He clearly still believes in police reform. In some places that includes reducing police budgets in favor of more effective public safety programs. That's what "defund the police" means. Not "abolish", reduce funding. In NYC he's running on maintaining police funding at current levels and adding additional nonviolent peacekeeping capacity. He may personally believe that ultimately funding can be redirected further, but that's not what he's running on.
Criminal justice is majorly fucked in the US broadly. We incarcerate non-dangerous people with minor offenses way too long, and we let dangerous repeat offenders walk free. The answer isn't so simple as "lock more people up" or "let everyone go", we're in a trickier bind than a straightforward over incarceration or over lenient set of policies. Mamdani talks a lot about reducing penalties for minor nonviolent offenders, and for increasing rehabilitative capacity, but he does retreat to rehabilitation too readily (from a rhetorical efficacy perspective) when questioned about how to handle repeat offenders.
I don't think he's actually changed his values at all, he's just polished his phrasing and set more achievable near-term goals.