New York: Mamdani defends appointment of convicted robber as member of his public safety team

New York City mayor-elect, socialist Zohran Mamdani, on Tuesday defended his decision to appoint Mysonne Linen, a rapper and activist who was convicted of armed robbery in the late 1990s, as part of his transition team to advise him on the criminal justice system.

According to The New York Daily News, Linen was convicted of armed robbery of two cab drivers in 1997 and 1998, offenses for which he served seven years in prison. The individual has since maintained that he was falsely accused.

His appointment to Mamdani's team was announced on Nov. 26 in an Instagram post by Until Freedom, a New York City-based social justice organization, of which, according to Fox News, Linen is the leader.

Mamdani argues that the individual's lived experience and his perspective on criminal justice will help shape a more inclusive city government.

"We put together a team of more than 400 New Yorkers who are on 17 different committees," Mamdani said when questioned by Fox News. "These are New Yorkers who bring with them both a fluency of the policies and politics of the city, the places that they've succeeded, the places that they've failed, and we will take all of their experiences and their analysis into account as we build a city for each and every person," he added.

"It's wrong," the widow of one of the cab drivers who was allegedly robbed by Linen told The New York Post. "Somebody that committed that kind of crime and then you make him an advisor on criminality?" said the woman, who asked not to be identified.

Some of the anti-crime activists who will advise Mamdami

In late November, Mamdani released a list of members of the Community Safety Committee, a group of 26 people who will advise him on criminal justice matters. City Journal reported that the list includes several activists who not only are openly hostile toward law enforcement, but also reject the very concept of prison punishment.

Some on Mamdani's transition team want to drastically reduce New York's prison population, in line with the socialist's pledge to close the Riker's Island prison.

According to City Journal, Meg Egan of the Women's Prison Association helped devise the plan to close that prison.

"She has envisioned a future in which incarceration is 'obsolete,' and argued that the borough-based jails that replace Rikers should be 'centered on care rather than security or control,'" City Journal asserted.

Separately, committee member Janos Marton was introduced as a candidate for district attorney of Manhattan with an election platform that proposed "ending the war on drugs" by abolishing the New York City Special Narcotics Prosecutor's Office. Marton has also argued that police misconduct cases provide an opportunity to "shrink the size of the police budget so that there's fewer police officers."

Another committee member cited by the FT is Max Markham, executive director of the New York University Police Project, who in an interview with a nonprofit last month, stated that the city does not need to send police to handle calls related to "animal control, property theft, traffic accidents, and towing."

According to City Journal, nearly half of the members of the Community Safety Committee are pushing for radical public safety reform, which, according to the report, would turn New Yorkers into "test subjects" in the world's largest experiment against law enforcement.