Andrew Cuomo praised Mayor Eric Adams on Saturday for rolling out a plan to hire an additional 5,000 police officers — a move aimed at boxing Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani before Tuesday’s election.
“We have one of the lowest levels of police officers in modern political history. We’re losing police officers — one of the highest rates of attrition — because they’re so short staffed they have to work all the time,” the former governor said.
“They’re working weekends, they’re working overtime. So they’re leaving. Hiring 5,000 police officers will actually give them enough staff where people can work normal shifts.”
Adams’ plan would boost the NYPD’s headcount from its current level of just below 34,000 to 40,000 by 2029 — the most in nearly two decades.
The hiring binge, which would cost an estimated $17.8 million in the upcoming fiscal year and which would scale to $315.8 million by 2029, is contingent on the approval of the progressive City Council.
On the campaign trail, Cuomo, who one poll has him closing the gap on the frontrunner Mamdani, dared his left-wing rival, who in the past has supported defunding the police, to publicly oppose the Adams plan.
“Zohran said that he is against the additional police officers,” the former governor said.
“Now, there are only two options: either Mamdani knows more about public safety than Mayor Adams — who happened to have been a police officer for 22 years, and mayor of the city of New York, and borough president of Brooklyn — or he knows more than Police Commissioner [Jessica] Tisch, who he thinks is good because he asked her to come on and she says we need 5,000 more police.”
Cuomo also sought to draw a sharp contrast between himself and the state assemblyman from Queens.
“Or he knows more than me, who was governor for 11 years, ran the state police for 11 years, and worked with the NYPD,” Cuomo said of his time in Albany.
“So either he’s a better public safety expert than all of us, or his whole campaign is just political schemes. It’s just a political ideology — a statement of the ideology of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which he is a card-carrying member.”
Cuomo went on to say that “socialists are against the police.”
“Remember, this is a man who said the NYPD is racist, wicked and corrupt, and a security threat,” the former governor said.
“He’s the one who said ‘defund the police,’ to ban the police, disarm the police. That is his gospel, and that is what he is saying here and showing New Yorkers when he says he won’t support additional police officers.”
Mamdani has renounced his past statements supporting “defund the police.” He has also offered up an apology “for the language I’ve used” when he called NYPD officers racist.
The Democratic frontrunner has proposed spending $1.1 billion on a new Department of Community Safety tasked with taking mental health calls in place of police officers.
Mamdani has also said he would invite Tisch to stay on as police commissioner if he is elected.
The Post has sought comment from Mamdani’s campaign.
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