As a first-term New York State assemblyman, Zohran Mamdani’s views of law enforcement in 2022 were still very much grounded in his democratic socialist roots and shaped by well-publicized acts of police violence.

“We need to dramatically curtail the power and presence of the N.Y.P.D.,” he wrote on his campaign website in 2022 as he sought re-election to his Assembly seat in Queens.

At the time, Mr. Mamdani called for the New York Police Department to reduce its work force “by 1,300 officers through attrition.” He pushed to “immediately” end police overtime, freeze hiring, cancel new officer classes and “institute a moratorium on all new equipment purchases.”

“We can’t reform our way out of a racist police system that’s working exactly as designed — as a means of control over Black & brown New Yorkers,” he wrote.

In his run for mayor of New York City now, Mr. Mamdani has taken steps to mollify some voters and many prominent Democrats who have expressed concerns about his views of the police. Their perception that he is anti-police was based on his calls in 2020 to defund the Police Department and his characterizations of the department as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”

He now says those remarks, made while he was not yet in office, arose out of frustration after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, who was Black, and that they do not reflect his current views on public safety.