Her view on cops is anything but picture perfect.
Kara McCurdy, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s director of photography, has a long history of publicly ranting about her disdain for police — and even her desire to beat some up.
“Isn’t it f—-d up that we can’t throw punches at the police,” the socialist shutterbug wrote on X in May 2020.
In a since-deleted Sept. 20, 2023 post, tagged to the 114th Precinct in Astoria, McCurdy complained about encountering two NYPD squad cars and wrote, “Get f—-d u pieces of s–t,” referring to officers she claimed tried to “corner” her vehicle in the rain after she honked at them for pulling out in front of her.
In what appears to be a follow-up message two minutes later at 4:44 am, she ripped: “Truly wish nothing but the absolute worst things imaginable for f–ing pigs who f-k around with the safety of me [and] my neighbors in ALREADY DANGEROUS SITUATIONS I hope u all rot.”
McCurdy, a 32-year-old Queens resident, describes herself as a “documentary photographer” whose work is “rooted in the belief that the intimate is inherently political.”
She first met Mamdani in 2019 during a campaign party for socialist Councilwoman Tiffany Caban, during Caban’s failed Queens district attorney race, she told Vanity Fair.
A few months later, the Savannah College of Art and Design graduate volunteered to help Mamdani’s 2020 state Assembly campaign and has been his campaign photographer since — earning $36,200 shooting last year’s mayoral race and Hizzoner’s transition to City Hall, records show.
The Mayor’s Office refused to say what McCurdy earns as director of photography.
Critics say McCurdy’s hiring is the latest example of the soft-on-crime mayor’s lack of respect for the NYPD.
“Our police force is already feeling demoralized and disrespected, and now there’s an avowed and open cop hater cavorting around Gracie Mansion with the Mamdanis,” said Councilman Phil Wong (D-Queens) “As they say, show me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are, and this mayor is certainly showing us who he is.”
McCurdy — who is pals with Mamdani’s wife Rama Duwaji — photographed and documented the first couple’s nuptials last year.
Duwaji is already under fire for her own online antics — such as liking a series of anti-Israel social media posts, including one claiming Hamas’ rapes of Israelis during the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack were a “mass hoax.”
McCurdy’s antipolice rhetoric stretches back to at least June 2012 when she posted “freaking hate cops” without explanation.
She’s also gone out of her way to slam NYPD cops on X — even when they’ve cut her some slack.
“I almost ran over a woman and the cop said, ‘pls stop at stop signs’ like???? This is my third encounter with cops within the month, and they’ve all been stupidly nice to me???? ACAB til I die baby,” she wrote June 4, 2020, referring to the acronym “All Cops are Bastards,” a rallying cry for the “Defund the Police” movement.
Six days later, McCurdy photographed a young girl she was babysitting standing, with her right fist raised, atop a park bench with “FTP” – an acronym for the protest phrase “F—k The Police” — spraypainted on it. The shutterbug posted the photo on X, along with the caption: “You love to see it.”
Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) wondered what kind of message McCurdy’s hiring sends to the NYPD.
“The mayor, who is supposed to be leading the department, trusted this woman enough to have her take his wedding pictures and brought her with him into the halls of government, all while she has a history of spouting off on social media about her desire to punch cops and calling police officers pigs,” she said. “This is repugnant.”
The Mayor’s Office and McCurdy did not return messages.
