Legal Aid calls out increase in 'broken-windows' policing under NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani

Roni Jacobson and Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News on Sep 21, 2026

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NEW YORK — “Broken-windows” style policing for minor infractions increased 13% during the most recent fiscal year, half of which fell under the Mamdani administration, according to recent city report, leading the Legal Aid Society to call out the mayor for failing to deliver on his campaign promises of comprehensive police reform.

The NYPD issued almost 221,000 low-level summonses this fiscal year compared to about 196,000 the year before, according to the Mayor’s Management Report released earlier this month.

The report, which covers the fiscal year from July 2025 to June 2026, includes the last six months of the Adams administration and the first six months of the Mamdani administration.

“Mayor Mamdani promised New Yorkers a departure from broken-windows policing, yet these numbers show the City continuing down the same troubling path of aggressive low-level enforcement pursued by the previous administration,” Legal Aid said in a statement.

“These encounters are not harmless. The Mayor cannot preach affordability while his police department subjects New Yorkers to enforcement that can mean fines, missed work, and time spent navigating the court system,” the statement continued. “And at a time of heightened federal immigration enforcement, unnecessary police contact can carry especially serious consequences for immigrant New Yorkers.”

Criminal justice advocates have argued that broken-windows policing, which cracks down on minor offenses under the theory that they lead to more serious crimes, does not decrease crime and unfairly targets Black and brown people.

In a report issued in June, Legal Aid noted that Mamdani had largely maintained the previous administration’s response to subway fare evasion, with 3,188 arrests and 26,267 summonses issued for fare evasion in the first quarter of 2026, compared to 3,696 arrests and 26,177 summonses the same time last year under Adams.

About 94% of those arrested and 81% of those issued summonses were people of color, Legal Aid reported.

The organization has also called out the Mamdani administration for failing to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group and cease maintenance of the NYPD’s “gang database,” both of which he promised on the campaign trail to end.

Mamdani has largely deferred matters of police policy and implementation to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who was appointed by Adams and has continued in the position under the current administration.

The Mayor’s Management Report attributes the 13% rise to the 1,735,003 311 service requests received by the NYPD in 2026 — a 6% increase from the previous year.

The police response under Tisch, an NYPD spokesman said, has been for Quality of Life Division officers to address community concerns “about real issues impacting their neighborhood,” not to amp up broken windows policing.

“This isn’t broken windows policing,” Tisch said at press conference in August 2025. “This isn’t about cracking down to prevent crime — it’s about restoring order and improving quality of life.”

The Daily News has reached out to the mayor’s office for comment.

In his remarks at U20 Summit of U.S. and international city leaders on Sunday Mamdani addressed what he called “quality of life” concerns, emphasizing his brand of “pothole politics.”

“Over the last few decades quality of life has come to be seen as a right-wing concern,” Mamdani said, also naming “efficiency” and “rooting out corruption” as similarly conservative-coded issues. “There has been a sense that if you are to admit to an interest in those, that you are assisting the right wing — when in fact what I think the truth is is that, if you ignore these things, that is what the assistance is.”

“These are in and of themselves incredibly important things that we have to deliver on and not allow there to be some kind of ideological monopoly on who cares and who can deliver on them,” Mamdani said.

“If you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency, and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say, ‘That’s who did it.’”

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