Mamdani Angers Base: Mayor Authorizes Use of NYPD Unit He Has Vowed to Disband

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing criticism from progressives after it emerged that he has final approval for an NYPD unit he once said “brutalized countless New Yorkers.”A directive the Mayor’s Office issued to the NYPD at the start of the year compels the police to get Mr. Mamdani’s approval before deploying the Strategic Response Group, Politico reported.The group is a part of the police force’s Special Operations Bureau mobilized for “significant incidents” ranging from parades and protests to shootings and bank robberies.Mr. Mamdani has repeatedly promised to dissolve the SRG, renewing that vow as recently as Monday. When a reporter asked about the arrests of his fellow socialists by the group, he re-committed to disbanding the SRG, not on an “inshallah timeline, but an actual one.” The disclosure that he has to approve deployment of the unit has caused consternation among his progressive base.“According to the NYPD, the Mamdani admin has approved sending the SRG to protests, despite having the authority to block it,” the NYCLU said in a statement Wednesday. “If true, this is alarming. The mayor must keep his pledge to disband the SRG and the City Council must pass the CURB Act to prevent other units from implementing these tactics.”The news of the mayor’s hands-on oversight of SRG coincides with the release of his long-awaited plan to combat antisemitism, which accounts for 57 percent of hate crimes in New York. The document, which avoided defining “antisemitism” as well as any mention of anti-Zionism as an interrelated phenomenon, left leaders at many of New York’s largest synagogues and national Jewish groups unconvinced that the city has their back.“In recent months and years, Jewish New Yorkers have watched protests turn hostile outside synagogues and Jewish institutions,” the Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey wrote in an X post responding to the SRG oversight news Wednesday. “There must be transparency in who has a final say in keeping New Yorkers safe: should it be the Mayor, who does not have the trust of the majority of Jewish New Yorkers, or the NYPD?”Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who presided over this year’s Israel Day parade after the mayor declined the invitation, has served as a prominent liaison between city government a Jewish community that has attested to feeling increasingly alienated under Mr. Mamdani’s leadership. She has not offered any public support for the mayor’s vision for disbanding the Strategic Response Group. But final say in policing rests with him, according to the mayor.“Our police commissioner runs the NYPD, our police commissioner reports to me. And as the mayor, ultimately I am responsible for what happens in our city within each and every city agency and department,” the mayor said in an interview in April.The Mayor’s Office did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.A police department spokesperson declined to answer questions about the specifics of the mayor’s approval of SRG deployment.“We communicate with City Hall on this topic as we do on a host of things related to the department,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement to The New York Sun.The SRG has this year made arrests at protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and at protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week. It has also responded to an attempted bombing by Islamic State-aligned extremists outside Gracie Mansion.Since he set his eyes on City Hall, Mr. Mamdani has largely walked back anti-police statements he made in 2020, shortly after his election to New York State Assembly, including calls to “Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence.”A 2023 analysis of complaints against the department by the New York Civil Liberties Union found that officers of the Strategic Response Group were twice as likely as their colleagues to be the subject of complaints. In the first seven months of Mr. Mamdani’s term, the city paid out more than $53 million to settle 493 lawsuits alleging police misconduct that began under prior administrations, per the Mayor’s Management Report. “As Mayor, I will disband the SRG, which has cost taxpayers millions in lawsuit settlements and brutalized countless New Yorkers exercising their First Amendment rights,” Mr. Mamdani wrote in December 2024 in response to the unit’s deployment to Amazon warehouses at Queens and Staten Island where employees were picketing. At the start of the year, those efforts appeared to be on track. Mr. Mamdani’s fellow Democratic Socialist, City Councilmember Chi Ossé reintroduced a bill drafted in partnership with the NYCLU that would cut the Strategic Response Group out of protest and demonstration responses called the CURB Act. It garnered 22 co-sponsors, but has remained stuck in committee.

Mamdani Angers Base: Mayor Authorizes Use of NYPD Unit He Has Vowed to Disband

Mamdani Angers Base: Mayor Authorizes Use of NYPD Unit He Has Vowed to Disband

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