In the first six months of this year, NYPD officers made 24,343 arrests of suspects carrying weapons.
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officers → make → weapons
Cops fired their guns just 23 times.
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Cops → fire → guns
Yet last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced he was directing the police department “to conduct a comprehensive review of its use-of-force policies and practices.”
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he → announce → policies
“Every New Yorker deserves to know that force will be used lawfully, carefully and only when necessary,” declared the mayor, implying that New Yorkers have reason to believe the NYPD falls short of that standard now.
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NYPD → deserve → standard
Let’s look at the numbers.
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’s → let → numbers
From Jan. 1 through June 30 of this year, the NYPD fielded more than 3.35 million 911 calls — more than 100,000 of which involved either persons in crisis (75,746) or weapons (33,063).
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100,000 → field → crisis
The 24,343 arrests of weapons-carrying subjects were part of more than 141,000 arrests officers made over the same six-month period.
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officers → carry → period
Despite all that activity, the department recorded fewer than 6,000 use-of-force incidents, and only 23 involved an officer firing a gun.
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officer → record → gun
Assuming each use of force came within the context of an arrest, the NYPD has used deadly force in no more than 0.02% of arrests, and force of any kind in just 4.2% of arrests.
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NYPD → assume → arrests
Note, too, that nearly 2,500 officers were injured in use-of-force incidents in the first half of 2026, almost as many as the roughly 2,600 subjects injured in those same encounters.
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officers → note → encounters
The facts speak for themselves: The NYPD is appropriately restrained, especially when it comes to deadly force.
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it → speak → force
Yet even before the mayor’s new review had begun, Mamdani felt it necessary to announce five new “reforms” to reflect that “accountability is a central value” of his administration.
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accountability → begin → administration
These include more money for the NYPD’s inspector general and making it harder for officers who leave the department with pending disciplinary charges to be rehired elsewhere in New York state.
But again, the premise that the NYPD has an issue with accountability is baseless.
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NYPD → include → accountability
Nor is there much reason to suppose a new suite of reforms will significantly reduce the use of deadly force.
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suite → suppose → force
Consider: The department recorded 52 firearm discharges in 2017, and 53 in 2024.
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department → consider → 2024
This is notable, because in 2020, NYPD became subject to a slew of reforms adopted at the state and city levels that don’t seem to have had any effect on police firearm discharges.
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that → become → discharges
To refresh our memories, after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order “requiring each local government in the State to adopt a policing reform plan by April 1, 2021.”
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government → refresh → April
In conjunction with that order, he signed into law a package of 10 police reforms hastily passed by the Legislature.
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he → sign → Legislature
That included: a criminally enforceable ban on chokeholds, new and more stringent reporting requirements after firearm discharges, a new office to probe officer misconduct and the appointment of the attorney general as an independent prosecutor in cases involving the death of an unarmed civilian.
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That → include → civilian
Not to be outdone, in 2020, the New York City Council passed the so-called “diaphragm law,” criminalizing even the accidental compression of the necks and diaphragms of even violently resisting subjects.
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Council → outdo → subjects
The following year, the council created a way to sue police officers by letting plaintiffs sidestep qualified immunity, a legal shield against civil suits, and voted on a number of other reform measures.
This all was on top of the adoption of body cameras by the NYPD, which began in 2017 and was also supposed to reduce use-of-force incidents.
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which → create → incidents
Yet despite these changes, the number of force incidents reported by the NYPD grew every year between 2020-2024 (as did the number of NYPD members injured by subjects).
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number → report → subjects
From where I sit, what these reforms did achieve was worse officer morale — and more suspects willing to resist arrest.
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achieve → sit → arrest
Whether police use force depends far more on the choices of the subjects they try to arrest than on utopian proposals dreamt up by “progressive” police critics.
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they → use → critics
That may be a hard pill for NYPD’s foes to swallow, but it might be easier if they let the facts wash it down.
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facts → swallow → it
Rafael A. Mangual is the Nick Ohnell fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of “Criminal (In)Justice” (2022).
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Mangual → contribute → 2022
The Aporia
