'Deeply disturbing': Convicted armed robber joins Zohran Mamdani's public safety transition team

Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, has provided a number of strong indications that he might be every bit as radical in office as his critics feared in the lead-up to the mayoral election.

On Sunday, for instance, the Democratic Socialist conflated "immigrants" with illegal aliens, stressed that New York will always be a "city for all immigrants," and identified ways that people can "stand up to" U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Last week, Mamdani suggested that he will end the clearing out of homeless encampments in the city.

Mamdani's personnel decisions similarly hint at what is to come.

'The optics and reality here point to a potential erosion of public safety in New York City.'

Until Freedom, an identitarian activist group, recently announced that its leaders had been "chosen to serve on Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani's transition team on committees for public safety and criminal justice respectively." In addition to one of the radical co-leaders of the 2017 Women's March, Tamika Mallory, Mamdani brought aboard Mysonne Linen — a 49-year-old convicted armed robber who has made no secret of his racial animus and once suggested that all of the black Americans in President Donald Trump's "circle" are "coons."

According to the New York Daily News, Linen was found guilty in July 1999 of robbing multiple cab drivers in the Bronx. A prosecutor indicated at the time that Linen was among the thugs who held up cabbie Joseph Eziri in 1997 and smashed him with a beer bottle. Another cabbie, Francisco Monsanto, identified Linen as the thug who held him at gunpoint on March 31, 1998, stealing a ring and cash.

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Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Despite denying responsibility — he claimed at the time he didn't need to commit the crimes because he was making money writing music for rappers such as Lil' Kim — Linen was ultimately convicted on three counts of robbery, weapons possession, and possession of stolen property. Although he faced up to 25 years in prison, he was released on parole in July 2006.

Linen, still denying his guilt and complaining about "white supremacy," later co-founded Until Freedom with Mallory and Linda Sarsour — the Islamic activist who told fellow radicals earlier this year to "abolish Israel."

On the transition page for the mayor-elect, who said in 2020 that the NYPD "is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety," Linen is listed among the radical leftist members of Mamdani's committee on the criminal legal system.

Until Freedom said in response to the appointment, "This is a testament to our decades of work advocating on behalf of black and brown communities and our expertise in gun violence prevention, legislative advocacy, and criminal justice reform. We are building something different."

The news that an apparently unrepentant convict will advise New York City's incoming mayor did not sit well with Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, who told the New York Post, "It is both disheartening and deeply disturbing that individuals who are convicted felons and have a history of breaking the law are being given the opportunity to help shape the future of New York’s criminal justice system."

"The men and women who risk their lives every day to enforce the law have been shut out from this process entirely," added Boscio.

"It's just another appointed adviser that has a questionable past, which is in line with some of his other recent appointees who were anti-police and establishment," retired NYPD Chief of Department John Chell told the Post. "The optics and reality here point to a potential erosion of public safety in New York City."

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