New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently visited the family of Jabez Chakraborty, the man shot by police in Queens after he attacked an officer and his partner with a 13-inch carving knife. After what must have been a lightning-fast crash course in law, medicine, and psychiatry, the mayor declared that Chakraborty should not be arrested or prosecuted, that he needed treatment instead of jail, and that his handcuffs should come off. Because, apparently, talking to a suspect once makes you a court-appointed expert.
Thankfully, Melinda Katz and a Queens County grand jury live in the real world. Chakraborty was arraigned on charges of first-degree attempted assault and weapons possession.
The mayor does not get to decide what caused Chakraborty to act the way he did. That is the job of the police and the district attorney. He also doesn’t get to decide whether Chakraborty is still a danger to himself or others based on one emotional meeting with the family of an apparent paranoid schizophrenic.
Katz was right to present the case to a grand jury. The case will now go to Queens County Mental Health Court, where judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and clinicians will determine the best outcome. That’s called a justice system—something progressives tend to forget exists when it gets in the way of their narrative.
This situation is tragic for everyone involved: Chakraborty, his family, and the officers who had to defend themselves. The mayor spoke to Chakraborty and his relatives. Did he speak to the officers? They work for him. Did he even ask how they were doing?
We ask police officers to walk into danger every day. We ask them to protect us. What we cannot ask them to do is stand still and get stabbed to death for political theater.
On Mamdani’s watch, through Sunday, 24 people have been murdered, 58 shot, more than 3,100 feloniously assaulted, and about 1,500 robbed. How many of those victims has he visited? And did anyone on his staff think it might be unwise for him to interview a man who allegedly attacked two of his own officers? Is he planning to testify about what Chakraborty told him?
Let’s be honest: the mayor doesn’t like cops, and his reflex is to assume they are wrong whenever force is used. That’s ideology, not leadership.
The numbers tell a different story. In 2024, the NYPD responded to 6.9 million 911 calls. About 162,961 involved emotionally disturbed persons. Only 355 required any use of force, and 353 of those involved tasers. Just two incidents involved firearms. That’s 0.0012 percent of all EDP calls.
In one of those two cases, the suspect attacked officers with a machete. In the other, tasers failed while the suspect came at them with scissors. That’s not over-policing—that’s survival.
Instead of injecting himself into a criminal case to score political points, the mayor should focus on what really happens to the mentally ill once they become a danger to the public. It is extremely difficult—legally and logistically—to keep someone hospitalized against their will unless they are charged and held in custody. That’s the problem that actually needs solving.
But this is what progressives do: exaggerate rare incidents, push unrealistic solutions, cite ideologically friendly studies, and ignore the consequences.
The good news? The justice system is still working, police are still doing their jobs, and New Yorkers still expect their leaders to protect them—not lecture them. And as long as common sense keeps winning in courtrooms, there’s hope that public safety will too.
