New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is reportedly getting ready to disband one of the NYPD’s most critical units, the Strategic Response Group, which handles violent protests, counterterrorism, bank robberies, shootings, and missing persons cases. Because apparently when you’re a democratic socialist running America’s biggest city, the first thing on your to-do list is kneecapping the cops.
According to a Politico report, Mamdani may formalize the move through an executive order. City Hall is also weighing whether to park whatever replaces the SRG under his brand-new Office of Community Safety. That’s a real thing he created. Office of Community Safety. Sleep tight, New Yorkers.
Now here’s where it gets truly spectacular. One proposal being considered would put a unit of civilians in charge of responding to protests, with police officers only stepping in if arrests are needed. Civilians. Leading protest response. In New York City. The same city where the SRG was deployed for the papal visit. Mamdani disbanding NYPD elite unit What could go wrong with sending unarmed civilians to manage a crowd that just chased off the ICE agents?
The SRG was created in 2015 and, per the NYPD’s own description, is trained for civil disturbances, major events, shootings, bank robberies, and counterterrorism operations. It is not, by any measure, a small-time operation. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has pushed back hard, defending the unit as a “critical asset” and pointing out that SRG officers typically aren’t even deployed to peaceful demonstrations. They show up when criminal activity is involved. That’s kind of the whole point.
Tisch made exactly that argument at a March City Council budget hearing, explaining that of the 4,255 protests the NYPD responded to in 2025, the SRG was available at just 245 of them. That’s roughly six percent. So the unit that Mamdani wants to blow up was used sparingly, professionally, and only when things got ugly. But sure, let’s replace it with civilians and good vibes.
The pressure to kill the SRG has been building from Mamdani’s fellow travelers on the left. The New York Post reported earlier this month that Rep.-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier of New York’s 13th Congressional District was among the loudest voices demanding the unit be disbanded, all because of a confrontation between police and anti-ICE protesters. So a future member of Congress wanted a counterterrorism unit scrapped because cops showed up when protesters got out of hand. That tracks.
There’s currently no word on what happens to the SRG’s specially trained officers, and no coherent plan exists yet for replacing the unit’s wide range of public-safety functions. Mamdani has said he wants to separate the protest-response mission from the counterterrorism mission, arguing the two were never supposed to be merged. The NYPD disagrees. Commissioner Tisch disagrees. Common sense disagrees.
Mamdani is expected to announce the plan soon, possibly via executive order. New Yorkers who were already wondering how a democratic socialist mayor would handle public safety are about to find out firsthand. The good news is at least the Office of Community Safety has a very reassuring name.
