Page T26From§Eachthe evening edition — 12 October 2026
As it ran on the front
Here's a question I thought I already had an answer to. Last Thursday, an ICE agent fired seven shots in Marble Hill, and one of them is still lodged near Oscar Belgal's neck. The question going around the city that day was simple enough to count on one hand: whose use of force are we talking about? I thought I had it written down. Sunday, Mayor Mamdani answered it himself, on MS NOW — he said the agents looked like "mass shooters," called ICE a "rogue" federal agency, said its agents view the law as "merely a suggestion." That's one shape of the answer. I circled it.
Monday, the same question came back wearing a different shape. Fox, the Washington Examiner and the Washington Post all ran it that morning: Mamdani had ordered a sweeping review of use-of-force policy. Not ICE's. The NYPD's. I read it twice, looking for the sentence where the agency that actually pulled the trigger showed up in the policy. I didn't find it. Maybe it's in there and I just don't have the page.…
…(cont) I drive a car that won't start on the first try some mornings, hasn't for two winters now, and anybody who knows me knows better than to ask about the fan belt. Here's the thing about that car: if the guy next door backs into it in his own driveway, I don't go order up a review of my fan belt. I go knock on his door. You deal with the thing that hit you first. You fix your own problems on a different day — a day when nobody got shot.
So I go back to the question again. Whose use of force. And this time I notice something that was sitting there back in September: Politico reported that early in his term, Mamdani had already put a rule on the books — his own office would have to sign off before the NYPD's Strategic Response Group could deploy to make arrests at protests. He already had a lever on that specific unit. The story asked, flat out, why he hadn't used it more since. I don't have an answer to that one either. But it's the second time I've written the same question down, so it must be worth asking twice.
Monday, the New York Post had this too: Mamdani's own Democratic Socialist allies are publicly pressing him to fire Police Commissioner Tisch and to disband the Strategic Response Group outright. Some of them, the story said, left the mayor himself out of the call entirely. Not criticized. Left out. Who gets named in a demand, and who doesn't?
Oscar Belgal is still at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, in solitary, with that bullet still where it was last Thursday. His lawyers say he can't eat. That part hasn't changed shape at all. That's the part that's held steady while everything else around it kept moving.
I was about to leave it there. One more thing, though, before I go — I pulled a date I'd set aside. Last month, the Intercept reported NYPD misconduct settlements are still climbing under this administration, mostly holdover cases, on pace to push the city's total payout since 2018 toward a billion dollars if nothing changes. A review takes months, by the mayor's own office's timeline. Those settlements aren't waiting on the review. They're being paid right now, while the review gets scheduled.
So I'm back where I started. Whose use of force are we talking about?
“ICE fires seven shots at a man with his five-year-old in the car, one bullet's still lodged in his neck, and the mayor's fix is a sweeping review of the NYPD, the one department that wasn't even there. That's not accountability, that's a redirect, and his own coalition is pointing at the actual target: the police commissioner, not the agency that pulled the trigger. The guy with the bullet gets solitary confinement and no timeline; the agency that shot him gets no review at all.”
“Look, the officer was alone and made a split-second call — that's not a shooting, that's law enforcement doing a dangerous job the city won't let them do safely. And Mamdani going on television calling federal agents "rogue" and comparing them to mass shooters, that's the real safety problem here, not the seven rounds downrange. Did I say rounds downrange? I mean — the officer's conduct speaks for itself, and frankly the only review anybody needs is of Mamdani's rhetoric.”
The receipts
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
New York officials’ bizarre reactions to ICE shooting: Letters to the Editor — Oct. 13, 2026NY Post readers react to city and state officials response to the shooting of a criminal illegal immigrant by an ICE agent.
House Democratic candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier is calling for New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to step down after a suspected illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic was shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the city on Thursday. The shooting, which took place around 4 p.m. in the Marble Hill…
Oscar Belgal, 28, of the Dominican Republic is being forced to endure the torturous situation while being held in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on shock gloves a UN rapporteur called incompatible with the prohibition on torture ABC10 San Diego / UN Special Rapporteur finding, August 2026
Harry Styles addresses ICE shooting in New York with call for ‘dignity and justice’Harry Styles urged Madison Square Garden fans to show compassion and justice for Oscar Belgal after the ICE shooting sparked protests in New York City.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Socialist of America comrades are mounting calls for NYPD Commissioner Tisch to step down and for the city to disband the police department’s Strategic Response Group – with some notably leaving Hizzoner out of the calls to action.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani accused ICE of being a "rogue federal agency" after an immigration officer fired seven shots at a man in Manhattan.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has applied his pro-Hamas mindset to the illegal immigrants in his city, calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be abolished because its officers won’t let illegal immigrants use children as human shields to protect themselves while they commit crimes. ICE officers shot illegal immigrant…
A civil war is brewing inside the DSA over its support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani -- with his socialist comrades up in arms over his attendance at an Oct. 7 vigil and his support of NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
The announcement thrusts the city deeper into the nationwide debate over how law enforcement officials protect themselves and the public.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is calling for a comprehensive review of the New York City Police Department’s use-of-force policies over the coming months after several high-profile incidents involving police and renewed calls from progressives for change. “When the government uses force against a New Yorker, the standard for…
Mayor calls for end to agency’s operations in city after agents shot and wounded man with five-year-old in car The New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani , on Sunday compared US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE )’s recent shooting of a man in the Manhattan enclave of Marble Hill to a mass shooting scene – and called for an end to the…
Zohran Mamdani launched a New York Police Department use-of-force review after the Win Rozario shooting, but it falls short of campaign pledges.
· Inside Mamdani’s fraught effort to rein in the NYPD unit he pledged to end from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· DoorDash Spent $1.4 Million Trying to Stop Mamdani From Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why. from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
· NYPD Misconduct Payouts Still Soar Under Mamdani — And May Keep Growing from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.