Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani joined the brother of fallen security officer Aland Etienne Wednesday afternoon to honor the victims from Monday's shooting.
Both men gathered at 32 BJ headquarters in Manhattan - the union that Etienne was a part of.
Mamdani who landed in the city early Wednesday morning, says he went straight to the home of fallen Officer Didarul Islam to speak with the grieving family.
Despite repeated calls to focus on the victims of the tragedy and not politics, Mamdani was asked by multiple reporters about past comments and tweets about the NYPD.
They spoke specifically about his tweet from December 2024, where he said in part,
"As Mayor I will disband the SRG which has cost taxpayers millions in lawsuit settlements + brutalized countless New Yorkers exercising their first amendment rights."
The SRG, or the Strategic Response Group, was one of the first groups to respond to Monday's midtown shooting.
"The city has come to rely on the strategic response group as its primary means of response to acts of protests across the city when New Yorkers exercise their First Amendment rights, and that decision in asking the members of that unit to respond to protests, as opposed to what was the stated reason, is the decision that has led to the violation of a number of New Yorkers civil rights," said Mamdani.
Mamdani also called out political rivals for focusing on the past and not the present.
“It's beyond me that politicians are looking to use these days to score some political points on the very day I held the father of Officer Islam in my arms," said Mamdani.
The Democratic nominee says he will attend Officer Islam's funeral on Thursday.