I led NYPD squad Mamdani hates — here’s what he – Latest News
A decade in the past, in 2015, then-Police Commissioner William Bratton entrusted me to develop the New York City Police Department’s Strategic Response Group.
The commissioner was deeply involved in regards to the division’s capability to reply to a mass-casualty terror assault like those that had lately devastated Mumbai and Paris.
In each cities, coordinated groups of terrorists focused a number of high-profile places utilizing explosives and AR-style rifles, leading to vital loss of life.
We created the SRG as a specialised unit of 700 uniformed officers, working 24/7 throughout all 5 boroughs.
The unit was constructed round three core missions, which stay its function immediately.
First of all, SRG offers counterterrorism assist, backing up our elite Emergency Service Unit during terrorist incidents.
We applied a key innovation: a specifically educated and geared up Rescue Task Force that operates in partnership with FDNY/EMS.
This joint unit — the primary of its variety within the nation — establishes secure corridors to evacuate and deal with injured civilians during lively threats.
Notably, this group leaped into motion during Monday’s deadly assault on a Midtown workplace building, safely escorting rescuers caring for victims and securing the foyer, rooftop and perimeter.
SRG additionally responds to main incidents and emergencies citywide, augmenting precinct sources.
The unit is deployed to lively main crimes on a day by day foundation, together with robberies, burglaries, assaults and shootings.
Its officers conduct searches for lacking kids and aged people, and are geared up to handle civil-disorder incidents with the instruments and coaching to conduct orderly mass arrests.
Finally, SRG officers are strategically assigned to areas experiencing spikes in road crime, and play a very important position in securing main metropolis occasions — together with New Year’s Eve in Times Square, the Fourth of July fireworks and the Thanksgiving Day Parade — by offering important crowd-control and public-safety features.
Keep up with immediately’s most important information
Stay up on the very newest with Evening Update.
Thanks for signing up!
To type SRG, we consolidated 9 present models into a single, unified command succesful of responding within minutes to any precinct within the metropolis.
This reorganization each streamlined our emergency response and considerably decreased administrative prices.
Importantly, SRG has adopted clear insurance policies to safeguard First Amendment rights at any time when its officers are deployed at demonstrations — and its ways have led to a vital discount in lawsuits, saving town thousands and thousands of {dollars}.
The unit is dedicated to defending free speech and the precise to peaceable meeting, and has been since its inception.
Monday’s assault at 345 Park Avenue in Manhattan demonstrated SRG’s readiness and effectiveness.
The first SRG models arrived on scene at 6:34 pm — simply six minutes after the initial 911 call.
Officers entered the building correctly armed, geared up and educated to confront the menace and supply help as needed.
The NYPD’s Strategic Response Group stays a cornerstone of our metropolis’s security and resilience — which is why it’s so disheartening to listen to Zohran Mamdani, a main candidate for mayor, pledge to eradicate the unit altogether.
If that ought to come to cross, the query is — who?
Who will render lifesaving help and evacuate college students at a Columbine-, Ulvade- or Parkland-type college capturing?
Who will seek for an aged Alzheimer’s affected person who walks out of his Brooklyn home on a freezing winter night time, or a 5-year-old little one lacking from Central Park on a sunny weekend afternoon?
Who will reply to flooding within the Rockaways and evacuate stranded residents?
Who will conduct grid searches for needed perpetrators after robberies and shootings?
Who will convey calm when civil unrest results in mass looting of companies and threats of assault towards residents?
To lead this metropolis ahead and guarantee public security, these are the questions we need to ask ourselves — in addition to those that want to grow to be our mayor.
Chief Stephen J. Hughes (Ret.) was the founder and first commanding officer of the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group.
