(MENAFN) New York Democratic mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani apologized on Wednesday to the New York Police Department (NYPD) for statements he made in 2020 during the peak of the George Floyd protests.

“I apologize for the language that I used and I spoke to them about the fact that I want to work with them to deliver public safety because what we're seeing in the city right now is we're asking officers to do nearly everything we can think of,” Mamdani said in an interview with Fox News.

He added, “We used to ask officers to focus on serious crimes. Now we're asking them to focus also on the mental health crisis, to focus also on homelessness. In one year alone, the NYPD receives 200,000 mental health calls.”

Fox host Martha MacCallum mentioned that officers she spoke with had requested a public apology from Mamdani. He responded: “I'll apologize to police officers right here, because this is the apology that I've been sharing with many rank-and-file officers. I apologize because of the fact that I'm looking to working with these officers."

Mamdani, who maintains a strong lead in the polls, said his perspective on policing has shifted during his time in the state Legislature.

"One of my focuses was, 'How do we deliver that justice?' And now what I know, having represented 100,000 people in western Queens, is that to deliver that justice you have to also deliver that safety. And that means representing the men and women in the NYPD," he said.

He also emphasized his commitment to protecting vulnerable communities: "It means representing the Black and brown New Yorkers who have been victims of police brutality. It means representing the Muslim New Yorkers in my district who were surveilled on the basis of their faith."

In June 2020, Mamdani wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.”

Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed on May 25, 2020, when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on his neck for nearly ten minutes. His death ignited worldwide protests against racism and police brutality, with demonstrations spreading well beyond the United States.

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