By: Nick Carraway

Democratic mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and his allies in the Democratic Socialists of America want to eliminate enforcement of all misdemeanor crimes — an idea that critics say would turn New York City into a lawless playground for criminals, the New York Post first reported.

The DSA’s official platform rails against policing and detention as “instruments of class war,” claiming they are designed to uphold “the domination of the working class.” The group openly calls for ending what it describes as “the criminalization of working-class survival.” As the Post first reported, the national platform adopted in 2021 goes even further, demanding that prisons, police, and every “carceral force of the state” be dismantled.

Mamdani, who belongs to the New York City chapter of the DSA and is its endorsed mayoral candidate, has repeatedly argued that the NYPD should stop focusing on what he calls “non-serious crimes.” In a campaign video posted to X, he insisted police should leave many offenses alone and instead concentrate only on major cases.

But the New York Post first reported that the so-called “non-serious” misdemeanors Mamdani and his comrades want to wipe out are anything but harmless. In New York, misdemeanors include theft or shoplifting under $1,000, simple assault, possession of illegal drugs, prostitution, and even driving while intoxicated. The most serious misdemeanors currently carry a penalty of up to one year in jail. Under the DSA’s vision, those crimes would effectively go unpunished.

Mamdani has also doubled down on legalizing prostitution and has consistently pushed to weaken punishments for so-called “non-violent” offenses both as an assemblyman and as a mayoral candidate. Critics note that he has even questioned the very definition of violence, once declaring at a protest outside the Manhattan DA’s office that “violence is an artificial construction.”

As the New York Post first reported, the DSA platform doesn’t stop at decriminalizing misdemeanors. It also advocates slashing prosecutor budgets, abolishing cash bail, scrapping pre-trial detention, ending electronic monitoring, and shutting down prisons for parole violations. In short, it is an agenda aimed at dismantling the entire justice system.

New Yorkers already alarmed by rising lawlessness see this as madness. “They’re driving the city into a hole that’s never going to recover,” said Greenwich Village resident Susan Ginsburg, who described her neighborhood as a “lawless drug den” thanks to soft-on-crime policies. Maria Danzilo, founder of One City Rising, told the Post it was “astonishing we’re even having this conversation,” adding that ordinary New Yorkers just want to get through their day without fearing for their safety.

Even public safety experts aren’t convinced by Mamdani’s claim that he’s moderated his positions since the Park Avenue massacre, when he backtracked slightly on “defund the police.” Rafael Mangual of the Manhattan Institute told the Post that Mamdani’s so-called moderation is meaningless: “Police and prison abolition are core tenets of the DSA party platform, and he’s never truly explained why or how he supposedly changed.”

The consequences of such a policy would be disastrous, critics warn. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa told the New York Post that Mamdani’s plan would create an “EZ-Pass for criminals,” making the police “even less effective” and unleashing chaos across the city. Ordinary residents echoed the sentiment. “It’s just difficult to imagine how adults in their right mind could come up with this,” Chelsea resident Alexander Kaplan told the Post. “We’re already suffering from terrible crime. This will make it a thousand times worse — and even talking about it will embolden criminals.”