Did zorin Mamdani visit attacker of NY police officer
Executive summary
Yes — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited Jabez Chakraborty, the 22‑year‑old who advanced on NYPD officers with a kitchen knife during a Jan. 26 incident in Queens and was shot, with multiple outlets reporting Mamdani spoke with Chakraborty and his family and saw body‑cam footage as the administration expedited its release [1] [2] [3].
1. The incident the reporting centers on
Police say Jabez Chakraborty, 22, allegedly picked up a large kitchen knife and moved toward officers who had been dispatched after his family called 911 for an involuntary removal; Chakraborty was shot multiple times, survived and remains hospitalized after surgeries, according to news reports and releases surrounding the case [4] [1] [2].
2. Did Mayor Mamdani visit the man who charged the officers? — the direct evidence
Multiple local outlets report that Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited Chakraborty in the hospital and also spoke with his family over the weekend following the shooting; Gothamist and City & State explicitly state Mamdani “visited Chakraborty and spoke with his family” and that he viewed the officers’ body‑camera footage as his administration moved to release it [1] [2]. ABC7 similarly reports Mamdani said he visited Chakraborty, noting the family’s description of his long history with schizophrenia [3].
3. How that visit has been portrayed and contested
Conservative and partisan sites framed the visit as Mamdani “visiting and consoling a man who charged cops with a knife,” using it to criticize him for empathy toward someone who allegedly attacked officers and to resurrect his past calls to cut police budgets [5]. At the same time, reporting from mainstream local outlets places the visit in the context of Mamdani’s broader policy pitch — accelerating a proposed Department of Community Safety to send clinicians to mental‑health crises — and his expressed gratitude for first responders even as he urged a different response model for such calls [1] [6] [4].
4. Political stakes, alternative readings and implicit agendas
Coverage shows two competing frames: one casts the mayor’s hospital visit as compassionate and policy‑driven — part of pushing for non‑police responses to mental‑health emergencies [7] [2] — while opponents use the same act to portray him as soft on crime and politically opportunistic, an angle amplified by partisan outlets and social media [5]. Sources also reveal underlying agendas: Mamdani’s team emphasizes reform of crisis response and transparency (body‑cam release), while critics weaponize the visit to question his stance on policing; outlets reflect those angles depending on editorial posture [6] [5].
5. What the reporting does not and cannot prove from the supplied sources
The available reporting documents Mamdani’s visit to Chakraborty and to the family, his viewing of footage, and the administration’s stated policy aims, but the sources do not contain hospital records, a contemporaneous statement from Chakraborty himself, nor a comprehensive timeline of every meeting Mamdani held around the incident; therefore claims about Mamdani’s private conversations or motives beyond the public statements in the cited reporting cannot be independently verified here [1] [2] [3].
6. Bottom line
On the narrow factual question — did Zohran Mamdani visit the man who charged NYPD officers with a knife — the answer in the reporting is affirmative: multiple mainstream outlets report Mamdani visited Jabez Chakraborty in the hospital and spoke with his family as the city prepared to release body‑cam footage and pressed for changes in mental‑health crisis response [1] [2] [3]. The visit has since become a political flashpoint, interpreted either as an act of compassion consistent with mental‑health policy goals or as fodder for critiques that he is insufficiently tough on violence, depending on the source [5] [6].