Cuomo Calls for 5,000 More NYPD Officers and Slams ‘Anti-Police’ Mamdani

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is now publicly backing Mayor Eric Adams’ push to add 5,000 officers to the NYPD, and he’s using the proposal to sharpen attacks on democratic socialist mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani whose long record of anti-police rhetoric is proving politically toxic.

Cuomo, speaking about the city’s officer shortage, said the hiring spike is needed just to return policing to a functional level.

“We're losing police officers at one of the highest rates of attrition because they're so short-staffed, they have to work all the time,” Cuomo said, according to the *New York Post. “Hiring 5,000 police officers will actually give them enough staff where people can work normal shifts.”

Adams’ plan would take the department from under 34,000 officers to roughly 40,000 by 2029, a number New York hasn’t seen in nearly two decades. The price tag comes in at nearly $18 million next fiscal year, growing to more than $315 million by 2029. City Council approval is still required, but Cuomo’s support signals that even Democrats are turning toward heavier policing amid crime fears.

And for Cuomo, now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani, the expansion is a political weapon. He blasted Mamdani as aggressively anti-police and unqualified to dictate public safety policy.

“Either Mamdani knows more about public safety than Mayor Adams –  who served 22 years as a police officer – or he's just pushing ideology,” Cuomo said. “Socialists are against the police.”

While Mamdani has refused to use the phrase “defund the police” during the general election season, his record hasn’t changed. He previously backed defunding, opposed Adams’ policing strategies, and is now attempting to soften his image with carefully staged reversals — even apologizing “for the language I’ve used” and proposing a new $1.1 billion Department of Community Safety to take over certain calls instead of police.

Critics see it as political cleanup, not sincerity. Cuomo suggested Mamdani’s shifting tone is an election-year makeover, not genuine concern for public safety.

Even Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa said that both Cuomo and Mamdani helped create the public-safety crisis they now claim they want to solve.

“Andrew Cuomo, the one that you're flirting with, said he would leave New York City and flee to Florida” if he loses, Sliwa told Newsmax. “I fight for what I know is right. Improve, don't move.”

Sliwa added that if Mamdani wins, he will not disappear quietly.

“If I happen to lose to Zohran Mamdani, I become his worst nightmare,” Sliwa continued. “I pitch my Republican flag and my law and order values, and I fight, fight, fight. That's what Republicans do – we don't surrender, we don't retreat, and we don't drop out.”

Mamdani’s campaign has declined to answer questions on his prior anti-police statements, which include past support for defunding NYPD and ending traditional policing models entirely.

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Cuomo Calls for 5,000 More NYPD Officers and Slams ‘Anti-Police’ Mamdani