Mamdani Calls for Disbanding NYPD’s Protest Response Unit After Police Arrest Dozens of Anti-ICE Activists Who Refused To Leave Hilton Lobby

The New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, on Wednesday resumed his controversial calls to disband the New York Police Department’s Strategic Response Group – which responds to disruptive protests as one of its functions – a day after the unit made several arrests at an anti-ICE demonstration inside a Tribeca hotel. Mr. Mamdani said he’s conferring with his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, about how the unit could be dismantled.Mr. Mamdani’s comments, one former cop said, do not appear to be driven by any serious data or public safety concerns.“This is totally driven by emotion. There’s not even one data point to back up why the SRG should be disbanded,” a retired NYPD lieutenant and host of the podcast New York’s Finest: Retired & Unfiltered, John D. Macari Jr., tells the Sun.Speaking at a City Hall briefing on Wednesday, Mr. Mamdani said he continued to believe the SRG should be disbanded.NYPD officers arrest immigration rights activists after a sit-in at the Hilton Garden Inn on January 27, 2026. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images“We don’t believe that there should be a unit that has both counterterrorism responsibilities and responsibilities to respond to protests. The conflation of the two is part of this issue,” Mr. Mamdani said during a press conference on Wednesday. The SRG was launched in 2015, the brainchild of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s police commissioner, William Bratton, to allow police officers to operate on both “offense and defense” when responding to terrorist attacks. The SRG consolidated eight separate patrol borough task forces into one unified command, expanded its missions from potential terror attacks to other daily needs such as disorder response, crime suppression, and mobilizations to emergencies that include bank robberies and protests. That same year, the SRG came under fire for its “aggressive” response to protesters demonstrating against the death of Freddie Gray, who died while in police custody in Baltimore, inflaming anti-police sentiment in cities across the country. The NYPD arrested more than 140 people, at least two of them for assaulting officers – a response that social justice groups and progressive city politicians claimed was needlessly escalatory.The SRG again came under scrutiny during the rioting and looting that took place in 2020 after the death of George Floyd. NYPD officers were accused of racial bias and excessive force, particularly over the use of “kettling,” a crowd-control tactic in which police corral protesters before making mass arrests. In 2021, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, sued the NYPD and New York for “using excessive force and making false arrests.” NYPD officers arrest immigration rights activists after a sit-in at the Hilton Garden Inn on January 27, 2026. Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesIn 2023, the NYPD reached an agreement with Ms. James, the Legal Aid Society, and the New York Civil Liberties Union that changed how the NYPD responds to protests, including stopping its use of “kettling,” with the “primary goal of protecting the rights of protesters.” The city also settled several lawsuits from protesters who accused the NYPD of assaulting them during the demonstrations.“If you look back to October 7, 2023, were there any videos you saw of things going sideways in New York compared to the rest of the country?” a former NYPD chief of the department, John Chell, tells the Sun. “That’s because SRG made an adjustment,” he adds. Then came the uproar over ICE’s Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities, with protests erupting around ICE and border patrol operations in various cities. On Tuesday night, more than 60 protestors occupied the lobby of a Hilton Garden Inn in the affluent Tribeca neighborhood – protestors believed the hotel was housing federal immigration agents from out of town. The NYPD, including SRG officers, responded to the protest. After officers spent 45 minutes demanding the protesters leave the lobby, they arrested 66 people, with 64 of them ultimately receiving summonses for disorderly conduct and trespassing, according to the NYPD.On Wednesday, Mr. Mamdani – who has said the NYPD will not cooperate with the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement efforts – “commended” the protestors “who exercise their constitutional right to protest, especially in bringing attention to the horrific abuses of ICE across this country, and I think especially right now in Minneapolis.”New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026, in New York. AP Photo/Yuki IwamuraBut Mr. Mamdani’s office also issued a seemingly contradictory statement that praised the NYPD’s response to the protest, even as he called for disbanding the unit involved in the arrest. “The mayor is also pleased with the NYPD’s response to the protest and that today’s demonstration concluded without violence,” Mr. Mamdani’s office said in a statement.In her March 2023 testimony before the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, Civilian Complaint Review Board interim chair Avra Rice said SRG officers made up less than one percent of all CCRB complaints since the unit’s launch in 2015, though the misconduct substantiation rate against SRG officers was 10 percent higher than for NYPD officers overall. This disparity was driven largely by 2020 protest-related complaints.“The 2020 protests resulted in the highest rate of complaints the Agency has ever seen, with 300 complaints being filed in 48 hours,” Ms. Rice testified in 2023. Immigration rights activists stage a sit-in at the Hilton Garden Inn on January 27, 2026. Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesUltimately, 43 percent of allegations from the 2020 protests were closed because officers could not be identified – a stark contrast to just 11 percent in non-protest cases, Ms. Rice added.“This is called ‘transparency,’” Mr. Macari Jr. tells the Sun“They’re more easily identifiable, they’re better trained, and honestly, I don’t know how they’ll be able to control protests without a trained force handling when First Amendment activity gets out of hand,” Mr. Macari Jr. adds.The clash at the Hilton was the kind of social protest that critics like the author of “The End of Policing” and a member of Mr. Mamdani’s Community Safety transition team, Alex Vitale, said the city should be able to handle without the need for a tactical police response.NYPD officers arrest immigration rights activists after a sit-in at the Hilton Garden Inn on January 27, 2026. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images“The mayor’s office has a variety of community engagement offices that have often built up relationships with organizations that might engage in protest activity, from labor unions to community groups,” Mr. Vitale told City & State.Mr. Chell believes getting rid of SRG in its current form could “open up Pandora’s box” for Mr. Mamdani and New York. “It would really be an irresponsible move on his behalf just to appease his base and not to appease the millions of New Yorkers that rely on SRG for their safety,” Mr. Chell tells the Sun. “I think his rhetoric really doesn’t match the reality of what he needs to properly run a city and provide public safety to the residents in New York City,” Mr. Macari Jr. tells the Sun.He adds: “The SRG operates better than the NYPD.”

Mamdani Calls for Disbanding NYPD’s Protest Response Unit After Police Arrest Dozens of Anti-ICE Activists Who Refused To Leave Hilton Lobby

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