Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has not explained how shuttering a police terrorism unit will make New Yorkers safer in light of a suspected jihadist bomb attack.
Mamdani ran on a promise to dismantle the 11-year-old New York Police Department (NYPD) Strategic Response Group in order to separate counterterrorism work from protest policing after taking office in January. Authorities arrested an 18 and 19-year-old on Saturday for allegedly bringing homemade bombs to a scheduled anti-Islam protest outside Mamdani’s Manhattan home, marking the first high-profile terrorism case of the socialist mayor’s term.
Mamdani’s office and the NYPD did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation. Officials have not specified whether the Strategic Response Group was involved in the NYPD’s response to the incident.
Critics such as former NYPD Commissioner William Bratton and the Detectives Endowment Association have said that disbanding the unit would leave the NYPD under-resourced to protect crowded events such as protests.
The unit handles “disorder response, crime suppression, and crowd control,” as well as “shootings, bank robberies, missing persons, demonstrations, or other significant incidents,” the NYPD’s website says. Left-wing activists for years have accused the unit of overly aggressive tactics in a push to have it disbanded. Mamdani doubled down on his pledge to grant their wish in January remarks to the press, Fox News reported.
“I believe that we should do so not on the basis of any fiscal need, but frankly, on the need to decouple the counterterrorism responsibilities within the department from police response to First Amendment exercise,” Mamdani said, according to the outlet. He gave scarce details that day as to how he would restructure the NYPD to handle both issues, The Gothamist reported. The Strategic Response Group will continue policing protests until he shuts it down, according to Mamdani.
The Strategic Response Group’s commanding officer filed for resignation the day after Mamdani’s election win in November, The City reported. NYPD Special Operations Chief Wilson Aramboles, whose bureau oversees the unit, did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
In a Monday press conference, Mamdani and Tisch commended officers who they said responded swiftly to Saturday’s incident when the suspects threw explosives at protesters. Police arrested the two men immediately, determined the devices were real explosives with the FBI’s help and removed them from the streets, Mamdani and Tisch said. Officers also evacuated buildings after finding a third suspicious device in a nearby vehicle, which they then removed from the area, they said.
One device contained triacetone triperoxide, “a dangerous and highly volatile homemade explosive that has been used in [improvised explosive device] attacks around the world,” Tisch told reporters, calling the attack “ISIS-inspired.”
The FBI raided the Saturday bombing suspects’ Pennsylvania homes on Sunday, according to local media. The teenagers reportedly told law enforcement that they watch ISIS content in interviews.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced federal charges against the two “ISIS-inspired terrorists” on Monday. Tisch also promised to deploy “additional counterterrorism resources” across New York in light of the incident, including “heavy weapons teams, K-9 units, aviation and more.”
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