Posted on 11/13/2026 8:03:48 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Every great city keeps a toolbox for its worst days; the specialized units, the contingency plans, the trained professionals who step into chaos when ordinary resources fall short.
In New York, a city that learned its hardest lessons in fire and ash, that toolbox was built with blood-earned purpose. For over a decade, one of its sharpest instruments has been the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group.
The SRG isn’t a beat cop operation. This is the team that mobilizes for counterterrorism, civil disturbances, mass shootings, bank robberies, and missing persons cases. It secured the papal visit. The NYPD itself calls it a “critical asset” deployed when conditions demand a heightened police presence.
In a city of eight million people hosting an endless roster of high-profile events, the SRG is the kind of resource you hope you never need – and are grateful exists when you do.
So naturally, someone wants to scrap it.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, is preparing to dismantle the Strategic Response Group by executive order. Politico reported the pending announcement, and City Hall spokesperson Dora Pekec confirmed the administration’s intent to disband the unit and “separate protest response from counterterrorism.”
Mamdani’s justification? He argues the SRG has drifted from its counterterrorism origins into suppressing First Amendment activity. Here’s how he put it in September:
The SRG were created a little more than a decade ago with an intention first of dealing with threats, terroristic threats to the city.
What it has eventually become is both dealing with counterterrorism and responses to exercising First Amendment rights. I do not believe that those purposes need to be dual purposes.
Sounds almost reasonable … until you check the actual numbers. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch testified before the City Council that in 2025, the department facilitated 4,255 protests. The SRG showed up at 245 of them. That’s roughly six percent, and only at those involving criminal activity. This isn’t a unit harassing peaceful demonstrators; it’s a unit responding to crime.
Hard to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
Reports indicate City Hall may absorb the SRG’s responsibilities into Mamdani’s new Office of Community Safety, a politically controlled body he created earlier this year as part of a sweeping public safety overhaul.
Translation: strip operational authority from trained NYPD professionals and hand it to bureaucrats answering directly to the mayor. Brilliant.
The vocabulary rotates every few years. “Reimagine.” “Decouple.” “Community safety.” The underlying agenda hasn’t budged an inch. Reduce police capability, wrap it in progressive packaging, and cross your fingers that nobody connects the dots before consequences land on someone’s doorstep.
Let’s not forget who Mamdani’s political allies are. The Democratic Socialists of America openly advocate abolishing police and prisons altogether. Dismantling the SRG isn’t bold reform. It’s a down payment.
New York doesn’t get to schedule its emergencies. The city only gets to decide whether it’s ready for them. Gutting the SRG won’t make New York safer, freer, or more equitable. It will simply mean that when the worst day arrives – and in this city, it always does – the toolbox will be one instrument lighter.
Eight million New Yorkers deserve better than ideology dressed up as governance.
Source: Fox News
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That works both ways.
Let the Strategic Response Team stand down and see what mammydammy does when he really needs them. mammydammy opens the door to anyone that wants to harm NY’ers. Let the fun begin.
I suspect they’re already having problems staffing it but couldn’t let that be known.
Tick tock.
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