On The View this week, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani doubled down on one of the most reckless ideas in politics: sending social workers, not police, to respond to “mental health” calls.

This is the same Mamdani who once labeled the New York Police Department (NYPD) “wicked,” “corrupt,” “racist,” “anti-queer,” and even “a threat to public safety.” Now, despite claiming his views have “grown,” he still insists that armed officers be replaced by unarmed civilians in some of the most dangerous calls officers face.

Pressed on The View, Mamdani tried to rebrand his stance, saying he’s moved from “defund” to “invest.” But the outcome is no different: stripping officers from the front lines and handing life-and-death calls to unarmed civilians. When asked whether he’d publicly apologize to officers he branded a “threat,” he refused — offering private “conversations” instead. Words like that aren’t slips. They’re a roadmap.

There has been no real evolution since Mamdani’s 2020 podcast interview where he said, “You know, if somebody is jaywalking, if somebody is surviving, you know, going through domestic violence … there are so many different situations that would be far better handled by people trained to deal with those specific situations, as opposed to an individual with a gun.”Unfortunately, domestic violence calls are never routine. They are ambushes waiting to happen.

In 2009, a 911 call about a mother arguing with her son over a dog urinating on the floor turned into one of the bloodiest days in Pittsburgh history. Officers Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo were gunned down as they entered the home. Officer Eric Kelly, off duty but rushing to back them up, was mortally wounded while trying to save his friends. Three men — husbands, fathers, mentors — lost their lives over something as trivial as a dog accident on the carpet.

Sixteen years later, in Pennsylvania again, police serving an arrest warrant in a domestic case were met with gunfire from an AR-15. Three more officers were killed, five wounded.

The examples are endless, and many have taken place in the city Mamdani hopes to run. (RELATED: Anti-Cop Socialist Poised To Take Control Of Storied Police Force He Once Sought To Tear Down) 

In 2022, one NYPD officer was killed and his partner was wounded while responding to a domestic violence call in Harlem.

Another police officer was nearly killed while responding to a domestic violence call in Brooklyn in 2023. While six police were interviewing the female victim, her boyfriend fired two shots in her direction, hitting one of the cops in his bulletproof vest.

The following year, two officers were shot in Brooklyn when a “routine domestic violence call,” as New York Daily News reported, “erupted into a harrowing fight for survival.” The suspect managed to wrestle away an officers’ gun during a scuffle and fired three rounds at the police, hitting one in the hand and one in the thigh.

These aren’t “rare” incidents. Every cop knows: when you hear “domestic” on the radio, it might be your last call.

The FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted database found that 43 officers were killed while responding to domestic disturbance or domestic violence calls between 2011 and 2020. That accounts for 8.5% of the total officers killed during that period.

Mamdani’s plan isn’t about making victims safer. If it were, he’d respect the people who run toward danger when everyone else is running away. (RELATED: NYC Socialist Mayoral Candidate Hires Private Security While Pushing Lefty Police Reform) 

But you don’t call officers “wicked” and “a threat to public safety” if you see them as partners. You say those things because you despise them. And someone who has spoken with that much contempt for police cannot suddenly claim to be impartial about whether they should even answer these calls. That’s not reform — it’s bias dressed up as policy.

Mamdani and his allies insult every badge by suggesting a clipboard and good intentions can replace backup and body armor. It puts social workers at risk of slaughter, burdens officers with protecting unarmed civilians in kill-zones, and abandons victims who dial 911 in terror.

And here’s the real danger: social workers aren’t stepping into these calls with humility. Many openly disdain the very officers they’d be working beside, carrying themselves as if a degree makes them wiser than men and women who have spent decades on the street. That arrogance is dangerous. It doesn’t just make them a liability — it forces police to manage two fronts: a violent suspect and a defiant, untrained civilian who thinks they know better.

When a victim is barricaded in a bedroom while bullets fly, they don’t need theory, lectures, or “alternatives.” They need backup. They need an officer who can fight to save their life.

That’s reality. Mamdani refuses to face it.

Kelly Rae Robertson is a former criminal justice investigator with more than 14 years inside the Pittsburgh court and jail system. She has firsthand experience with the failures of cashless bail and the dangers police face responding to violent offenders.