Zohran Mamdani explicitly backs off unpopular ‘defund’ police stance after officer shot dead in Park Avenue horror

Socialist mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday explicitly backed down from his unpopular past “defund the police” stance in the wake of a Midtown mass shooting that left four dead, including an NYPD officer.

“I am not running to defund the police,” he said during a highly-anticipated news conference, hours after he visited slain cop Didarul Islam’s grieving relatives.

The Democratic nominee went straight from the airport to the hero officer’s family home in The Bronx upon returning from an ill-timed trip to Uganda.

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Mamdani – who had tweeted in June that he wouldn’t defund the police if elected – drew outright skepticism from many cops, while politicos said it made sense for him to bow to the reality that defunding the police is an unpopular position.

“People are fools to believe he will help the city,” said one police source.

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said the move away from “defund” was a necessary one for Mamdani, the 33-year-old Queens assemblyman leading to win City Hall in November.

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“He didn’t want ‘defund the police’ to define his candidacy. It’s a necessary move for him,” Miringoff told The Post.

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The mass shooting Monday in a Park Avenue highrise by crazed gunman Shane Tamura – who killed Islam, a 36-year-old dad of two, and three innocent civilians before turning his assault rifle on himself – arguably presented the first test of Mamdani’s potential leadership.

But unfortunately for Mamdani, he was away celebrating his recent wedding.

Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose independent mayoral runs are so far lagging way behind Mamdani’s, commented on the shooting about an hour after the massacre, as did Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.

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Adams also met with Didarul’s family at the hospital later that night, and he and Gov. Kathy Hochul attended a “roll call” in Islam’s honor at the 47th Precinct.

Mamdani, for his part, offered a tweet 45 minutes after his rivals, referring to the “NYPD officer in critical condition” – even though Islam was reported dead before then.

The lefty lawmaker finally followed up the next morning with a heartfelt tribute to Islam and his immigrant background as a Bangladeshi police officer, but by then critics were slamming Mamdani’s lack of experience, past “defund” stance and call to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group.

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Mamdani returned to the city Wednesday and headed immediately to Bronx for a private and apparently meeting with Islam’s family, toting a big bouquet of flowers. 

He dodged questions before and after the visit, but was spotted hugging one of Islam’s grieving family members.

Afterward, Mamdani held a news conference with Bangladeshi American Police Association co-founder Shamsul Haque, a retired NYPD lieutenant, and the brother of Aland Etienne, a security guard who was among the victims in the Park Avenue terror.

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The mayoral frontrunner nodded when asked if he stuck by his vow to disband the police department’s SRG, the elite NYPD unit that responded to the massacre, if elected.

He maintained that the SRG has been too often tapped to respond to protests, leading to civil rights abuses, and said the unit should be replaced with another emergency task force.

“There is a need to ensure that every act we take is one that is actually delivering public safety,” he said. “And what we see right now, especially with regards to how we respond to protests, is not in line.”

But Mamdani said his notorious past anti-NYPD tweets weren’t reflective of his campaign’s stance, which was that the police play an integral role in public safety, but shouldn’t be tasked with filling in gaps in the city’s social safety net.

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He’s previously said social workers should be responsible for answering certain calls, including mental health disturbances and domestic violence reports.

“My statements in 2020 were made amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers held at the murder of George Floyd,” he said.

His tweets from the time included saying that “Queer liberation means defund the police,” posting “Defund the Haram Police” and calling defunding the police “a feminist issue.”

Mamdani that year also wrote that: “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”

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“White supremacy has many faces, from the police & prison systems in America to occupation & apartheid in Palestine,” he wrote on Aug. 6, 2020.

Ross Wallenstein, a Democratic operative with Wall to Wall Communications, scoffed at the idea that Mamdani has turned a new leaf since the height of the George Floyd protests.

“His latest tweet calling to disband the NYPD unit that responded to this week’s horrific shooting was in December. It wasn’t from 2020,” he said.

“New Yorkers won’t be fooled by this in November.”

Mamdani, while trying several times to shift the focus to Islam and the other victims, also chastised Cuomo for supposedly politicizing the tragedy.

“It is beyond me that politicians are looking to use these days to score such cynical political points, on the very day that I held the father of Officer Islam in my arms and he could not utter a single word,” he said.

“For the former governor to spend an entire day speaking almost exclusively about me and barely about the New Yorkers who have been killed is indicative of the very politics New Yorkers want to leave in the past.”

Both Cuomo and Mamdani, as well as Adams, are expected to attend Islam’s funeral Thursday.

Another former governor – David Paterson – gave Mamdani high marks for reversing course.

“I take Mamdani at his word. I’m just astounded it took a horrific shooting strategy to reconsider his position,” Paterson said.

Gregory Floyd, head of Teamsters Local 237 who represents NYPD school safety agents and NYCHA security officers, said he’s not buying Mamdani’s line about repudiating defunding the police.

“To come out and say it now because it’s unpopular, it’s too late now,” said Floyd, who is black. 

Ken Frydman, another Democratic operative and longtime police union adviser, said Mamdani can’t have it both ways.

“Defund the NYPD or not defund the NYPD?” he joked. “There isn’t a cop I know who trusts this guy.”