Mayor Zohran Mamdani is working to ease growing tensions with Darializa Avila Chevalier and other frustrated city socialists after placing his campaign pledge to abolish an elite NYPD unit on the “backburner,” the Post has learned.
Last month, Mamdani directed police officials and City Hall aides to develop a policy change involving the department’s Strategic Response Group, or SRG, a unit assigned to counterterrorism operations and large-scale protests, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
The mayor, who took office this year, is seeking a compromise that would address his abandoned campaign promise while acknowledging the practical demands of policing New York City, the sources said.
“It wasn’t really a priority,” said one source familiar with the matter, noting that discussions began earlier this year but became politically difficult to resolve and were eventually postponed.
“It was on the backburner,” the source added.
Mamdani’s renewed push followed criticism from House member-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier, whom he endorsed in June. The progressive firebrand attacked the police commissioner online, demanding her resignation and calling for the SRG to be dismantled, insiders said.
Disbanding the unit would be extraordinarily difficult because it could leave the nation’s largest police department without a dedicated response team for terrorist attacks or mass-casualty events, according to the sources.
Yet anything short of permanently abolishing the SRG may disappoint the Democratic Party’s far-left faction, including Chevalier, who won the Democratic primary in New York’s 13th Congressional District with significant support from Mamdani’s endorsement.
Chevalier, who supports defunding the police and abolishing prisons, intensified pressure on the mayor in mid-October. She accused the SRG of misconduct after being shoved during a chaotic protest, an incident captured on video as she confronted officers and shouted at them.
Her accusation came despite the SRG not responding to that demonstration.
Even so, Chevalier and City Councilman Chi Osse seized on the incident to pressure Council public safety chair Oswald Feliz, a Bronx Democrat, to advance legislation banning the unit.
The two Democratic Socialists of America members notably did not mention Mamdani, despite his control over the NYPD and his own campaign promise to eliminate the SRG.
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Their demands gained traction as other members of the party’s far-left wing joined the call.
Mamdani’s aides privately complained that Chevalier was attacking one of their own, telling associates they were “pissed,” the Post previously reported. The dispute was especially sensitive because Chevalier is dating Mamdani’s City Hall attorney, Ramzi Kassem.
Sources familiar with the SRG negotiations said discussions have accelerated in recent days, with an announcement expected “pretty soon.”
The sources said a policy change could be unveiled as early as next week, although the details have not been finalized.
Pressure from the left has eased in recent days. Chevalier and Osse were both seen meeting with Mamdani at City Hall.
The SRG, which responds to terrorist attacks and violent protests, has long been a target of criticism from the left, which argues that the unit has no place within the NYPD. Police critics have particularly demanded that it be barred from First Amendment demonstrations.
Supporters counter that the specialized unit is essential to the city’s security and that disbanding it could leave New York more vulnerable to attacks. The SRG is the NYPD’s primary response team for mass shootings, including the deadly incident on Park Avenue last year.
Protests are not the unit’s central mission. The SRG typically becomes involved only when arrests are required or when a demonstration ceases to be peaceful.
The unit has responded to slightly more than a dozen protests this year and made fewer than 10 arrests, most of them for blocking traffic, according to sources.
Chevalier and Osse appear to account for two of those arrests, which occurred outside the United Nations during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit last month.
The SRG faced intense criticism over its use of kettling and bicycles for crowd control during the George Floyd protests. However, many of those tactics have since been prohibited under the terms of a civil lawsuit.