Kickabout Earns An Own Goal

8 May 2026

When it comes time to look back on the Zohran Mamdani mayoralty, perhaps last week will be seen as the one in which the shine wore off, revealing not a brand-new take on governance, but the same old, tired stasis.

First came reports that the New York Police Department (NYPD) had shut down various community groups plans for World Cup soccer street parties, including those organized in coordination with the city Department of Transportation. A few days later it was reported that arrests of persons for taking up more than one seat on the subway had increased 3,000%(!) for the first three months of 2026 compared to last year.

The following day, an investigative report noted the many ways in which the NYPD had ignored or rejected changes to its gang database as recommended by the city Department of Investigation. This “slow walk” of gang database reforms, as The City put it, was occurring even though Mamdani campaigned on eliminating the database entirely. And, as the news site remarked, Commissioner Jessica Tisch continues to praise the efficacy of the database, while the mayor stands mutely by her side. Lastly, a final tabulation of the criminal summonses handed out to e-bike riders and cyclists for the first quarter of 2026 revealed that such summonses had increased more than 8,000%(!!) compared to last year.

The week’s events revealed, not just the retention of quality-of-life policing tactics which the mayor campaigned against, and which have been shown not to work, except to run Blacks and Latinos through the criminal justice system, but a clear definition of who is running the NYPD, that person most assuredly not being the mayor. Even in the instance of the NYPD giving criminal summonses to cyclists, the mayor waited almost three months before canceling a tactic he opposed while campaigning, and then inexplicably allowed the department another ten days to hand out summonses after he declared the tactic would no longer be utilized.

Already, five months into his tenure, the mayor has resorted to superficial efforts to show he is in charge of the NYPD, such as his declaring last week, after two detectives were placed on modified duty for beating an innocent arrestee, that he and Tisch had taken “immediate and decisive steps to ensure accountability.” Such a statement overlooks the fact the NYPD Patrol Guide pretty much mandates an officer involved in a noteworthy incident, such as occurred in this instance, be reassigned, and that such reassignment is not disciplinary, but solely administrative. But then these are sort of shell games you play when you are not in control but need to project that you are.

The mayor was reduced to doing a kickabout on the street with youths in order to distract from the NYPD putting the kibosh on the community World Cup street parties. Pitiful. Stay tuned — this comedy is set to run for three and a half more years.