Socialist mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani is planning to axe an elite NYPD task force that charged into a Park Avenue building during Monday’s deadly mass shooting if he takes over City Hall — despite expressing how “grateful” he was for the first responders after the attack.
The far-left Queens assemblyman, who shockingly nabbed the Democratic nomination last month, vowed to disband the police department’s Strategic Response Group, SRG, on social media in December 2024.
“As Mayor, I will disband the SRG, which has cost taxpayers millions in lawsuit settlements and brutalized countless New Yorkers exercising their First Amendment rights,” he wrote just two months after announcing his candidacy for mayor.
The SRG is a special operations division of the NYPD that responds to citywide mobilizations, civil disorders and major events. They also mobilize for emergency events like shootings and bank robberies, according to the NYPD’s website.
Mamdani has faced a spate of criticisms for his past smears of the NYPD, which include social posts from 2020 when he called to “Defund the Police” in the wake of the George Floyd protests that swept the nation.
Hours after gunman Shane Tamura’s horrific rampage that left four dead, including an off-duty NYPD police officer – Mamdani responded that he was “heartbroken” over the “horrific shooting.”
“I am holding the victims, their families, and the NYPD officer in critical condition in my thoughts,” he wrote. “Grateful for all of our first responders on the ground.”
But among those first at the scene were the members of the SRG, who then stormed into the building to ensure the shooter had been contained.
“He’s a joke,” one cop source griped of the mayoral frontrunner. “He only wants to ban SRG because they are the ones responding to his people’s protests.”
US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-21) continued to pile on, resurfacing one of Mamdani’s defund the police posts.
“Flashback: Kathy Hochul’s very own Commie Mamdani. A disgrace and truly unfit to be Mayor of NYC,” she wrote when sharing Mamdani’s anti-cop message.
“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD,” his post read.
Gov. Kathy Hochul – who called for uniform gun laws across all states following the shooting – clapped back at Stefanik’s comments in a Tuesday interview with CNN.
How the shooting unfolded
- Reports of the shooting at 345 Park Ave. start coming in around 6:28 p.m.
- Shane Tamura, 27, is seen getting out of a black BMW between 51st and 52nd streets with an M4 rifle.
- He enters the lobby and turns right, where he shoots police officer Didarul Islam, 36, dead.
- Tamura guns down a woman cowering behind a pillar in the lobby, sprays more bullets and walks toward the elevator bank — where he shoots dead a security guard crouching at his desk.
- One more man reports being shot and injured in the lobby. He was in critical but stable condition.
- The gunman allows a woman to walk out of the elevators unharmed before heading up to the 33rd floor, where building owner Rudin Properties’ offices are located, “and begins to walk the floor, firing as he traveled.”
- One woman is shot and killed on that floor before Tamura shoots himself in the chest.
- It’s unclear how long the mayhem lasted. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch posted on X at 7:52 p.m.: “The scene has been contained and the lone shooter has been neutralized.”
“Seriously going after an unelected official who said something back in 2020?” Hochul quipped.
“Come on, give me a break. Ask her the question. What are you doing to make your constituents safe?” she said.
In a separate post on Tuesday morning, Mamdani honored the life of the fallen off-duty police officer, 36-year-old father of two, Didarul Islam.
“When he joined the police department, his mother asked him why he would pursue such a dangerous job. He told her it was to leave behind a legacy that his family could be proud of,” Mamdani’s tribute read.
“He’s done that and more. I pray for him, his family and honor the legacy of service and sacrifice he leaves behind,” he wrote.
Democratic political operative and longtime police union advisor Ken Frydman slammed his party’s mayoral candidate over the “hypocritical” response.
“Mamdani is hypocritical and irony-deficient. He can’t say he’s ‘heartbroken’ over the Midtown mass shooting and praise first responders while calling for disbanding the Strategic Response Group,” Frydman argued.
New York State Conservative Party chairman Gerard Kassar echoed his concerns and issued a stark warning to New Yorkers about Mamdani’s anti-police rhetoric in the wake of Monday’s terror.
“New Yorkers need to seriously ponder who their next mayor will be. They need to think long and hard about potentially electing an unabashed anti-cop candidate in Zohran Mamdani,” Kassar said.
“If Mr. Mamdani were elected, he would have direct control over the NYPD – an agency he publicly despises,” Kassar added. “That cannot work in a city like New York.”
Other lefty politicians and Mamdani allies have echoed his calls against the SRG including social media maven and Bed-Stuy council member Chi Ossé — who introduced a bill in January that would prohibit the SRG from attending protests or “first-amendment events.”
The bill has garnered support from 24 Dem sponsors on the council, including Brooklyn Councilwoman Crystal Hudson.
Mamdani’s spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether he stands by his vow to abolish the SRG.
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