Cuomo proposes boosting specialized NYPD unit Mamdani wants to disband

Yahoo

a day ago

NEW YORK — As part of a $250 million public safety plan, Andrew Cuomo said Monday he wants to nearly double the size of a specialized NYPD unit as controversy around the division and police funding has heated up on this year's mayoral race campaign trail.
In an afternoon press conference in Midtown Manhattan, Cuomo, who's running as an independent in November's mayoral contest, said he'd if elected add 400 officers to the ranks of the NYPD's Strategic Response Group.
Cuomo also used the occasion to take a shot at Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, who following last week's Midtown shooting said he was backing away from previous calls to defund the NYPD. Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams have both seized on Mamdani's past tweets about wanting to defund the department, arguing they show his true feelings.
'If he became mayor, I guarantee you would see the rate of attrition increase,' Cuomo said at the Midtown news conference. 'What police officer wants to work for a mayor who says they're racist and anti-queer and a threat to public safety? What police officer wants to work for a mayor who doesn't have their back?'
Formed in 2015 mostly to respond to dangerous incidents like active shooter situations as well as mass protests, the SRG currently has about 500 members, so Cuomo's proposed new hires would mark a significant expansion.
The SRG has drawn criticism from civil rights advocates and Democratic elected officials concerned about its members facing disproportionately high rates of excessive force accusations, especially as it relates to protest response.
Mamdani, who's polling as the favorite to win November's election, has said he would disband the SRG and replace it with a unit focused squarely on tactical deployment, cutting out the mass protest response component.
'I think it would be a tremendous mistake to disband them,' Cuomo told reporters at his Midtown press conference, noting its members responded to last week's horrific Park Ave. shooting that left an NYPD officer dead.
Cuomo said he believes it's important the SRG retains all the functions it currently plays, including protest response, but that it's also key to add an additional 400 members — over a four year period — to increase coverage in all five boroughs, especially at big transit hubs and commercial corridors.
Asked if he's at all concerned about the high rates of abuse of force accusations against SRG members, Cuomo said the NYPD needs to make sure to police their own better.
'If we know the line and we know when someone steps over the line, there are discipline actions, including dismissal, sanctions, etcetera,' he said. 'So you have to strictly enforce the line.'
Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 amid sexual and professional misconduct accusations, floated his proposal for a larger SRG as part of a broader public safety plan that also included new details for how he envisions being able to hire 5,000 new officers to get the NYPD's total uniformed headcount to about 40,000.
The main proposal Cuomo floated is making new hires eligible for $15,000 sign-on bonuses that'd push their starting salaries to about $75,000, making the wage level competitive with neighboring counties and other big U.S. cities.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist who centered his Democratic primary campaign on proposals to make the city more affordable, has taken a different approach to public safety, saying he wouldn't seek to expand the ranks of the NYPD.
Instead, he has said he'd keep them flat and also launch a new civilian agency, the Department of Community Safety, that'd handle mental health emergency response in order to let cops focus on fighting crime.
In a press conference in downtown Manhattan on Monday, Mamdani said such a shift in focus would ensure officers aren't forced to work overtime, which he argued is a big reason cops are leaving the department at high rates, citing conversations he's had with rank-and-file officers.
'The fact that every year we ask them to take on additional responsibilities, we are making it more and more difficult for them to respond to the very responsibilities that drew them to the job in the first place,' he said.
Though Mamdani now says he supports keeping the police headcount flat, he posted frequently years ago about his support for defunding and dismantling the NYPD. In one especially explosive tweet, Mamdani wrote in 2020 that the NYPD is 'racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.'
In recent interviews with the Daily News, the heads of four of the NYPD's five main unions — representing lieutenants, sergeants, detectives and captains — said they are skeptical about his purported change of heart and don't believe Mamdani's pledge to keep the department headcount flat.
'If he wins, he's going to dismantle the department and its going to take us 15 years to correct the damage he's going to do,' said Vincent Vallelong, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, which has endorsed Adams for reelection.
The Police Benevolent Association, the NYPD's largest union representing rank-and-file officers, was alone among the department's union heads in not knocking Mamdani.
'We just buried a hero police officer,' said PBA President Patrick Hendry, whose union has yet to endorse in the mayoral race. 'We are focused on caring for his family, not on what any politician has to say.'
Adams, who's also running on an independent line in November and has been largely supportive of increasing NYPD funding in his first term, contended Cuomo doesn't know what he's talking about as it relates to the SRG.
'SRG comes with specific skills and talents that you want to use, you don't want SRG riding up on our subways just doing routine patrol or responding to routine codes of service. They have a specific task, we have enough of them to do the task,' Adams told The News at City Hall in arguing against an SRG expansion.
'One candidate is stating he doesn't want SRG at demonstrations. That's one candidate. Another candidate is picking an arbitrary number with no science behind it,' the mayor added.
_____