Does a viral post accurately summarize Zohran Mamdani's words from a podcast recorded more than five years before he was sworn in as New York City mayor? No, that's not true: The quote was shortened, and it changed its meaning. A longer, more elaborate fragment of his speech shows that he suggested that it shouldn't be the police, but specially trained specialists who would respond to domestic violence calls.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X published on January 4, 2026. It opened:
This is essentially Sharia law. Husbands are allowed to beat their wives.
The post shared what looked like a screenshot of another post that seemed to have been published by the New York Post account on the same social media platform. The image read:
Zohran Mamdani said NYPD shouldn't respond to domestic violence calls in resurfaced podcast interview.
This is what it looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/realMaalouf)
The quote
As of this writing, a search on X for the precise wording from the supposed New York Post tweet did not show the same post available online:
(Image search: Lead Stories screenshot of search results page at x.com)
However, the newspaper's website (archived here) still contained a July 11, 2025, article (archived here) published under that title:
(Image search: Lead Stories screenshot of search results page at nypost.com)
The piece discussed Mamdani's July 2020 interview on the Immigrantly podcast (archived here) that predated his mayoral campaign by years. The article's title omitted an essential part of his words, but the body of the text included a longer quote:
If somebody is surviving, going through domestic violence - there are so many different, different situations that would far better be handled by people trained to deal with those specific situations as opposed to an individual with a gun who has received quite a limited amount of training in general, but also in regards to these specific situations.
A longer fragment of the podcast that begins at the 13:11 mark provides a greater context of Mamdani's words:
...it is very important to speak about that reality that many people have because it pushes up against the conventional understanding of police who are seen to be people who come to resolve violence. But I mean, you just look at the history of the NYPD and you see that we have invested in a system that functions in many ways to punish poor black and brown people across this city and across this state and frankly across this country. And there are so many responsibilities we have given to the police that frankly should have nothing to do with their departments. A homeless person is on a train? They do not need a stranger with a gun to come and resolve that situation. If you know, if somebody is jaywalking, if somebody is surviving, you know, going through domestic violence, if there are so many different different situations that would be far better handled by people trained to deal with those specific situations as opposed to an individual with a gun who has received quite a limited amount of training in general, but also with regards to these kinds of situations. Because what ends up happening is that when we do this, these situations are escalated and we find so many people who are having a mental breakdown or people who are just trying to sleep on the train or you know people who are just suffering through something in their lives and instead of receiving a helping hand they were tased, they were shot, they were killed and then we ask ourselves why does this keep happening?
Mayoral policies
On January 6, 2026, Lead Stories repeatedly contacted Mamdani's press office for comment, but did not hear back. If we receive a response, this article will be updated as appropriate.
Available evidence shows that Mamdani did not suggest that domestic violence calls should be ignored by his administration.
Shortly after winning the election, Mamdani already commented on the context of the resurfaced quote. On November 19, 2025 (archived here), he said:
That's not been a part of the proposals that we put forward over the course of this campaign. What we did say, however, in the campaign, is that it's untenable for officers to be asked to respond to the 200,000 mental health calls they receive every year, to be tasked with the responsibility of taking on the mental health crisis, the homelessness crisis. The commissioner and I share a belief in the fact that in order for police officers to be able to do their jobs, we also need to create a Department of Community Safety that will be tasked with those responsibilities. Because when we look at the fact that officers had a response time of less than 11 minutes in 2020 today, it's closer to 16. A lot of that has to do with the fact that so many of these responsibilities continue only to increase. It's time to make sure police officers can do policing and that we have a department of community safety that can take on these other issues...
Mamdani's campaign website said (archived here) that the new department will be used "to prevent violence before it happens by prioritizing solutions which have been consistently shown to improve safety." A more detailed description of that proposal (archived here) did not say that his administration plans not to respond to domestic violence calls.
During his January 1, 2026, inaugural address (archived here), Mamdani mentioned the new department again and said that it "will tackle the mental health crisis and let the police focus on the job they signed up to do".
