Left-Wing Briahna Joy Gray Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 'Knows Better' on Policing

Briahna Joy Gray, host of the Bad Faith podcast, said this week that left-wing leaders who have stepped back from criticizing the police are not confused about the evidence. They are making a decision.

Gray named Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat, among the leftists she said know better: "AOC knows better." She then said of the group, "This is not an information issue. This is a choice."

The episode, recorded on Election Day, featured civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis, author of Copaganda and founder of Civil Rights Corps. It comes as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani nears the end of his first year in office with Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch still in place. Gray said she had once wondered whether Mamdani was playing a long game, but that it is now "pretty clear" that "Tisch isn't going anywhere."

Gray Presses on Whether Mamdani Is Constrained

On Mamdani, Gray did not issue a verdict. She asked questions, and she would not accept the answer that he does not have enough power. "Zohran controls the budget. He could cut the budget, right?" she said.

When Karakatsanis argued that Mamdani faces real limits, Gray asked him to spell them out: "Are we saying that it's not politically expedient for him to do it or he literally can't do it because he needs to buy in from city council or something else?"

She described a pattern on the left of treating power as never quite sufficient. "So Joe Biden has a trifecta. He doesn't have enough power. Obama has a supermajority. He doesn't have enough power," she said.

The sharper charge on the episode came from Karakatsanis. "So when I say Zohran is lying, I think the classic example of it is his statements crediting Jessica Tisch with lower crime in New York City," he said. He also said of Ocasio-Cortez that "she just obviously is uttering words that she does not believe, for sure."

Karakatsanis drew a line between policy and rhetoric. He said he is "less critical of him on this policy decision of whether or not to keep Tisch than I am of how he talks about Tisch and the police," and added, "I think Zohran is constrained a lot in what he can do in terms of like actually fundamentally tackling some of these issues."

Neither Mamdani nor Ocasio-Cortez appeared on the episode, and the episode did not include a response from either of them to Karakatsanis's charges.

Hochul's Role in Keeping Tisch

Gray pointed to Governor Kathy Hochul, saying "it was a condition of her endorsement at the very least that he keep Tisch on." In a clip Gray played, Hochul said of Tisch: "that was important to me before I supported him." Hochul endorsed Mamdani in September 2025. Tisch accepted Mamdani's offer to stay in November 2025, shortly after he won.

The mayor has stood by the choice. In July he said, "I thank Police Commissioner Tisch and the brave men and women of the NYPD for all they have done to make our city so safe," Fox 5 New York reported.

About 100 days into his term, a Marist poll conducted March 26-31 and released April 8 found 48 percent of city adults approved of his job performance, 30 percent disapproved and 23 percent were unsure. Marist said he underperforms his predecessor, Eric Adams, who had 61 percent approval at the comparable point.

What the Crime Numbers Show

In another clip Gray played, a reporter asked Mamdani whether he would fire the commissioner. "Jessica Tisch is the police commissioner. I have no plans to change that," he said, adding that "over the last 10 months that we've worked together, we have delivered the lowest recorded number of murders in our city's history."

NYPD data back that claim. The city recorded 203 murders and 489 shooting incidents in the first nine months of 2026, the fewest for that period in recorded history. In the first half of the year, murders fell to 122 from 162 a year earlier, a drop of about 25 percent.

Karakatsanis does not dispute the count. He disputes the credit. He said "Jessica Tisch has nothing to do with crime in Baltimore, for example," and argued that crime has fallen less in New York than in other places. The national figures available do not show New York lagging. The Crime Index, which tracks data from 547 law enforcement agencies, shows murder down 16.6 percent nationally from January through August, while New York's murders fell about 25 percent in the first half of the year. Those periods do not match, and neither figure shows how New York compares with Baltimore or any other individual city.

The Chesa Boudin Counterargument

Karakatsanis cited former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin as a warning about how much room progressive officials really have. "A bunch of billionaires raised millions and millions of dollars and mounted a recall campaign," he said. Boudin, a progressive prosecutor elected in 2019, was recalled in June 2022 after a campaign focused on crime and public safety.

Mamdani's second year begins in January, and Tisch remains commissioner.