A radical, police-bashing activist who resigned from a nonprofit job in the wake of an antisemitism scandal has been named to a $225,000-a-year position "overseeing" New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani's (D.) Office of Criminal Justice, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal.
Justine Olderman, a longtime public defender, "will work closely with district attorneys, public defenders, courts, public safety agencies and the Department of Correction to reduce incarceration, strengthen community safety and improve fairness," in her new role as criminal justice coordinator, Team Mamdani said in a June press release.
"We're proud to welcome Justine to our team, where she will help build a city in which justice is accessible to every New Yorker," Mamdani said in the announcement.
Olderman's salary was quietly revealed several months later in a City Record posting from October 9.
Olderman—a longtime activist and former executive director of the Bronx Defenders, a major nonprofit public defenders' group based in the crime-ridden South Bronx—made multiple posts on her now-deleted X account calling for the complete dismantling of the NYPD and of policing in general.
"Do you need any more proof that reform isn't the answer?" Olderman thundered after the police in Kenosha, Wis., shot and seriously wounded Jacob Blake, leading to violent unrest, in August 2020.
"You cannot reform something that was created for the purpose of enforcing white supremacy and has never wavered in its commitment to doing just that," she said adding the hashtag "#AbolishThePolice."
When then-San Francisco mayor London Breed (D.) announced in June 2020 that cops in her city would be replaced by "behavioral health professionals"—in a statement that the city has since removed—Olderman was ebullient.
"@NYCMayor what are you waiting for?" she posted in June 2020, adding the hashtags "#ReplaceTheNYPD" and "#DefundThePolice."
At the Bronx Defenders, she publicly demanded a billion dollars in cuts to the NYPD budget during Black Lives Matter riots in multiple cities following the death of George Floyd.
"And an attack by your police on one of us is an attack on all of us," Olderman said to then-New York mayor Bill de Blasio (D.) in June 2020 in yet another nuked X post.
"The violent police force that you consistently defend killed [Eric Garner]," she snapped at de Blasio in July 2020.
"George Floyd, Ma'Khia Bryant Would Still Be Alive In A World Without Police," Olderman observed in April 2021.
In another old post, Olderman demanded reparations be paid to the Bronx "in this moment of racial reckoning."
As City Hall notes, before entering government service Olderman spent 23 years with the Bronx Defenders—one of the largest and most influential criminal justice organizations on the far left—including 6 as its executive director.
She resigned in December 2023 as the organization was engulfed in an antisemitism scandal.
In March 2023, the Bronx Defenders ponied up a $170,000 settlement to a Jewish staffer over allegations of antisemitism and discrimination.
Bronx Defenders staffer Debbie Jonas, who is Jewish, said while she worked there she was called "a racist, a colonizer and a karen, and I was told that I was worse than the dirt under your feet and that my children were murderers," the New York Post reported in March 2023.
Olderman issued a public apology and forced her staff to undergo antisemitism training.
But her woke staff revolted, with many "infuriat[ed]" by the settlement and antisemitism training, the New York Times reported in December 2023.
A pro-Hamas blog noted that "staff replied organization-wide, seeking to vocalize anger over the settlement, concerns of a mandatory Zionist training led by the Brandeis Center, and frustration over management's lack of transparency regarding the settlement. Soon after, management limited access to the organization-wide listserv, citing internal communication policies as the reason for the ban."
With the issue still simmering, in August Olderman announced she would resign from the Bronx Defenders by the end of the year, telling staff in a statement it was "time for someone else."
Despite the sensitivity training, on Oct. 20, 2023, just days after Hamas's massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7 of that year, the Bronx Defenders Union put out a statement "in support of Palestinians"
"The Bronx Defenders Union-UAW Local 2325 supports Palestinian liberation and resistance under occupation," the group said in an open endorsement of Hamas violence.
Olderman left in December 2023 with the broader issues unresolved.
Bronx Defenders leadership has been spreading the "genocide" calumny since as far back as 2021, with one top leader emailing staffers to say that Israel's treatment of Palestinians was like the "genocide" of black and brown people in the United States. Olderman defended the missive at the time.
"This email was part of an ongoing internal discussion about how events around us impact our clients and our employees and was a communication that, as a Jewish person, I endorsed at the time and stand by today," Olderman told the Post in June 2021.
The Bronx Defenders has received hundreds of millions of dollars in city financing over the years, according to records from the city comptroller's office reported by the Post.
While the Bronx Defenders bills itself as a nonprofit dedicated to providing public defense to the downtrodden, the organization has long been the subject of controversy.
In 2014, when Olderman was serving as managing director, the Bronx Defenders participated in a video project advocating the killing of police officers. The involvement of a city-funded institution earned a formal probe from the Big Apple's Department of Investigation.
Olderman is married to Florian Miedel, a defense attorney most notable for defending Dino Bouterse, the son of the former president of Suriname. Federal prosecutors accused Bouterse of trying to provide weapons to Hezbollah. Bouterse pleaded guilty in 2015 and was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison.
