The New York Police Department is refusing to send a security detail with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife on her planned trip to two Middle Eastern countries under State Department “do not travel” warnings, contradicting an earlier claim from the mayor’s office that officers would accompany her.
“The NYPD does not send officers to countries with level 4 travel advisories,” a police spokesperson told Fox News, adding that discretionary personal travel does not qualify for the kind of protection normally reserved for official law enforcement or intelligence work.
Mr. Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, is scheduled to travel to Syria and Lebanon in September to visit family, according to the New York Post. Both countries carry the State Department’s highest-level “do not travel” designation, with terrorism among the cited risks.
City Hall initially said otherwise. Mamdani spokeswoman Dora Pekec reportedly told the Post that the NYPD had “strongly” recommended the first lady’s security detail join her on the trip — a claim the mayor walked back Tuesday, telling local station PIX11 the earlier statement stemmed from a staff miscommunication.
The reversal drew a sharp response from rank-and-file police representatives. NYPD Detectives’ Endowment Association President Scott Munro said his members are needed at home fighting crime and pushed back on any suggestion detectives would be dispatched overseas for a personal trip rather than a legitimate law-enforcement purpose.
The flap also revived scrutiny of Mr. Mamdani’s history with the department he now oversees. The left-wing mayor previously advocated defunding the NYPD, at one point branding the department “wicked & corrupt” on social media and calling for it to be dismantled. He reversed that position during his mayoral campaign, insisting he did not support defunding the department.
Relations with police have remained tense since he took office. Mr. Mamdani was booed off a stage in under a minute at an NYPD National Night Out event on Staten Island last week, drowned out by jeers and chants for him to leave.
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