“Jessica Tisch is the police commissioner. I have no plans to change that. The reason that I made the decision to have Jessica Tisch as the police commissioner was because of her record of uprooting corruption from the upper echelons of the NYPD, while lowering crime across our city.”
So said New York City DSA cadre member Zohran Mamdani, who is presently employed as the Mayor of New York City. Putting aside his elected office for a moment—it is both alienating and odd to see a DSA cadre member to be so aligned with the police department. It was only six short years ago when George Floyd was brutally murdered by a thuggish police department in front of the whole nation’s eyes, a crime which spurred on both riotous and righteous anger, while also delivering zero substantive policy changes.
In effect, nothing has changed about policing in America. It, in fact, has gotten worse. Not only are police departments still staffed with racist thugs who beat their own spouses, petty criminals who skim off the top of drug and gun busts, inveterate liars and cowards who would rather play Candy Crush on their phone than stop an active mass shooter in a school, but they’re also now working hand-in-hand with the fascist Trump administration, snatching not just kids and families of those here “illegally” (under present immigration law), but permanent residents, even citizens, off the street—sometimes, even going so far as to murder them in broad daylight, in cold blood.
Consider Renée Nicole Macklin Good. She was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She attended Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. She was the mother of a six year old, who was in the car with her. In other words, she’s exactly the last type of person you expect to be murdered by a regime hell-bent on racial and ethnic purity. And they killed her anyway, for daring to stand up to their fascist intentions.
The plain truth, as I and many see it, is that you are either with us, on the side of truth, and justice, and the dignity of people’s lives, or you are against us, committed to the side of lies, and crime, and the indignation of cold murder.
On October 8, 2026, we had another demonstration of the divide, when Trump’s regime descended on a father and his child in a car, recklessly opening fire in an attempt to murder both of them. Multiple bullets struck the car, wounding the father but thankfully sparing the child.
In response to this attempted murder, NYPD officers arrived. They immediately took the wounded, still-bleeding, definitely-afraid-for-his-life and his child’s father and arrested him, taking him into ICE custody. The ICE officers who attempted the murder? Not only did they walk free that night, but the NYPD shielded them, in effect, forming an impromptu defensive posse around the would-be killers.
It is true that, according to the statistics, crime has been on the decline in New York City. It is true that while crime has been on the decline, the Commissioner of the NYPD has been Jessica Tisch. Thus it is also true that Tisch’s police department let a fascist militia gang not only attempt a murder on a father and his child, she then actively defended them from any scrutiny or arrest.
And we come to the crux of the issue, for it is also true that Mayor Mamdani has said he has no plans to fire Tisch, that in fact, he sees nothing wrong with her actions.
Forget DSA, forget ideology for just a moment. Think very plainly, in black-and-white terms: is letting a potential killer go good or bad for law and order? If you think the job of the police is to let attempted murderers go, then fine, you can have that opinion. I disagree. Maybe 95% of all people disagree. You can attempt to parfait and mess around with the facts of the case, but in any other universe: if you open fire on a father and his child in the car, you are guilty of attempted murder, of both the dad and the kid. It doesn’t matter if the person holding the gun was Jesus Christ or Adolf Hitler, or vice versa. A crime is a crime is a crime is a crime.
And, Tisch has said plainly that she intends to let the killers walk free. To change nothing about her policing actions. After all, after the father had been nearly gunned down by the ICE thugs, she didn’t just summon the regular rank-and-file cops to shield the ICE gang, but her own like-gang of killers and criminals, the city’s SRG (Strategic Response Group), which itself has earned infamy as bad as ICE’s own.
After all that, Mamdani has said he does not intend to fire Tisch. In turn, that demonstrates he not only thinks she did nothing on October 8, but maybe, that she did something right.
Let’s go back to October 8, to the moment when the father and his kid just got lit up by ICE agents. In the immediate aftermath, how would the DSA have responded, assuming they were all already assembled? Would they, in their wisdom, have demanded that the NYPD deploy the SRG to protect and defend the ICE thugs? Would they have demanded the NYPD put the wounded father in chains, dispatching him to the ICE run concentration camps around the country? Would they have defended Jessica Tisch for doing so?
I doubt so, yet that is exactly what the Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, supposed DSA cadre member, did.
Now, I want to be clear: I am not calling for Mamdani’s immediate removal or for his censureship. As a mass socialist organization, representing the mass class aspirations of socialists everywhere, the only arbiter for Mamdani’s or anyone’s fate must be the masses. Mayor Mamdani himself must show up to the organization which helped elect him, and explain, in full, why he did what he did. If people are satisfied, nothing bad will happen to him, and if they aren’t, then and only then should we talk about removing him from the body.
One thing is plain: this should not be left to the babbling commentariat online, or to some elite cadre committee removed from the main body of membership. Mamdani’s fate should be left to the NYC DSA and to the NYC DSA alone.
I will say, for my part, I think Mamdani’s actions could, in theory, be excused and worked with. But it requires trust, it requires honesty. Right now, he’s lacking in both. If he showed up to the DSA and explained his position, and let the masses debate his position, he would either emerge stronger, or a former member of the DSA. And of course, if he doesn’t, then how can the DSA trust someone who doesn’t even give them the dignity of an explanation?
One thing is plain though: Tisch must go. Yes, the zionism is bad. Yes, she’s a corrupt toady of wealthy billionaires (being one herself). Yes, she is a nepotistic hire. Yes, yes, yes: all things are true, and more. But the most plain truth cuts the deepest: she let an attempted murderer go. She protected him. And then she helped the person who attempted the murder kidnap the person who nearly got killed. Crimes upon crimes upon crimes, which she enabled and supported.
If we are to accept the framing that crime has gone down in New York City, then we must not be blind to the fact that in spite of that, it is the NYPD’s own Commissioner that is committing crimes. NYC is no stranger to corrupt Commissioners, even corrupt Mayors. Are we to accept a corrupt, criminal Commissioner too, for four if not eight years, and for what? What exactly is New York City and the DSA getting out of Commissioner Tisch?
That is what Mamdani must explain to the DSA, and to the wider city of New York. Why is a Mayor, so otherwise committed to public safety and order, defending and standing by his criminal police commissioner? It boggles the mind, truly, and my only hope is that the membership of NYC’s DSA can get to the bottom of this and find a satisfactory answer from Mamdani, and if they can’t, to make it plain to other elected officials seeking a DSA endorsement that the broader body will not suffer incompetents, criminals, liars, or thieves.
Otherwise, the organization has no point. It should dissolve immediately and release all fees back to the membership, becoming a footnote in history, in that case. If there is no mass democratic accountability, there is no mass organization possible. It becomes a feckless, beyond pointless institution; a local bocce ball club would have more power in disciplining its members than the DSA!
Is the DSA more effective at commanding social change than a bocce ball club? Perhaps, perhaps—but only if they have principles to stand for.
Do they?
"Why is a Mayor, so otherwise committed to public safety and order, defending and standing by his criminal police commissioner?"
I think it's because he believes that if he takes on the NYPD he will lose, and the minute he tries the rest of his agenda is dead.