What Mamdani gets wrong about the NYPDs use of force

In the first six months of this year, NYPD officers made 24,343 arrests of suspects carrying weapons.Cops fired their guns just 23 times.Yet last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced he was directing the police department “to conduct a comprehensive review of its use-of-force policies and practices.”“Every New Yorker deserves to know that force will be used lawfully, carefully and only when necessary,” declared the mayor, implying that New Yorkers have reason to believe the NYPD falls short of that standard now.But does it? Let’s look at the numbers.From Jan.

1 through June 30 of this year, the NYPD fielded more than 3.35 million 911 calls — more than 100,000 of which involved either persons in crisis (75,746) or weapons (33,063).The 24,343 arrests of weapons-carrying subjects were part of more than 141,000 arrests officers made over the same six-month period.Despite all that activity, the department recorded fewer than 6,000 use-of-force incidents, and only 23 involved an officer firing a gun.Assuming each use of force came within the context of an arrest, the NYPD has used deadly force in no more than 0.02% of arrests, and force of any kind in just 4.2% of arrests.Note, too, that nearly 2,500 officers were injured in use-of-force incidents in the first half of 2026, almost as many as the roughly 2,600 subjects injured in those same encounters.The facts speak for themselves: The NYPD is appropriately restrained, especially when it comes to deadly force.Yet even before the mayor’s new review had begun, Mamdani felt it necessary to announce five new “reforms” to reflect that “accountability is a central value” of his administration.These include more money for the NYPD’s inspector general and making it harder for officers who leave the department with pending disciplinary charges to be rehired elsewhere in New York state.But again, the premise that the NYPD has an issue with accountability is baseless.Nor is there much reason to suppose a new...