Mamdani moves to disband the NYPD's Strategic Response Group, splitting protest policing from counterterrorism

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is preparing to disband the NYPD's Strategic Response Group, the roughly 600-officer unit that polices protests and large events and also handles counterterrorism work, his office confirmed. "As the Mayor has said, our administration will disband the Strategic Response Group and separate protest response from counterterrorism," spokesperson Dora Pekec told Politico, which first reported the plan on Thursday. "We will have more to share soon."

When and how

• Timing: Politico, citing three people with knowledge of the plan, said an announcement could come as early as this week. Bloomberg News reported it could come as soon as next week, citing a person familiar with the matter.
• How: The plan could be formalized by executive order, and City Hall has considered moving the unit's functions under the mayor's new Office of Community Safety, Politico reported, according to Fox News.
• The core change: Protest response would be separated from counterterrorism, the spokesperson said. The details of what replaces the unit have not been released.

What the SRG does

The NYPD describes the unit as a "critical asset" for parades, protests and major events, and says it also mobilizes for shootings, bank robberies and missing-person cases, Fox News reported. At a City Council budget hearing in March, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the unit is deployed to protests involving criminal activity, not typical peaceful ones, and that in 2025 it was available at 245 of the 4,255 protests the NYPD handled, about 6%. She said her talks with the mayor concerned "the future of how we police protests generally," not disbanding the unit.

Civil rights advocates have long criticized the SRG over its handling of demonstrations. Mamdani said in September that the unit was created a little more than a decade ago to deal with terror threats and had grown into one that also responds to people "exercising First Amendment rights," and that those two jobs should be split.

The politics

Disbanding the SRG was a campaign promise that put Mamdani at odds with Tisch, whom he kept as commissioner, Bloomberg reported. Earlier this month the New York Post reported that the plan had been put on the "backburner," frustrating democratic socialist allies; Thursday's statement from City Hall says it is moving ahead.

We will update this story when the mayor announces the plan.