NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams lauded the NYPD’s controversial riot unit Monday and suggested it would stay in place — days after it and the police department came under fire for failing to appear at a City Council hearing on the unit’s handling of the 2020 George Floyd protests.
Adams suggested Monday on “CBS News New York” that the unit, known as the Strategic Response Group, would remain as is, despite calls from several City Council members to have it disbanded over the heavy-handed tactics it used during the protests.
“I think it’s an appropriate tool used effectively,” he said, adding that the unit is part of the reason for recent dips in crime. “That’s where these numbers come from. Proper policing — not heavy-handed policing — is moving us in the right direction.”
Aside from handling protests and civil unrest, the SRG unit is also used to supplement precincts in need of additional police. personnel.
Last Wednesday, the City Council devoted an oversight hearing to the SRG, but police brass didn’t show up to take questions, pointing to ongoing litigation as its excuse for offering only written testimony in response. Several Council members slammed the NYPD at the time, with some calling for the SRG to be disbanded and others demanding the NYPD’s funding be cut.
“There were some issues in NYPD’s legal bureau with an understanding of how they can have a public discourse, a public conversation around this issue,” Adams said Monday after being asked about the NYPD’s absence. “We always participate in the hearings. You can see the number of hearings our agencies have participated in throughout last year, and we will continue to do so.”
Prior to last Wednesday’s Council’s hearing, the meeting had been deferred twice after the NYPD begged off attending.
The rationale Adams’ offered for his administration’s failure to attend the hearing — and the reasoning offered by the NYPD and the city’s Law Department — has come under fire in recent days as merely a smokescreen to get out of being put on the hot seat.
Hours after Wednesday’s no-show and the ensuing outrage it prompted, the NYPD amended its written testimony in a statement sent out to the Daily News.
“The NYPD is actively engaged in litigation and negotiations that touch directly on the SRG and the court has issued a gag order directing confidentiality in the matter,” the NYPD statement read. “That means the NYPD’s expert witnesses — those whose voices would be most valuable in the ongoing public dialogue — remain barred from speaking.”
That statement and the written testimony, which offered a similar, but more toned down rationale for not appearing, led to a back and forth with one of the NYPD’s legal adversaries, the New York Civil Liberties Union, which responded that “there is no gag order in place.”
The NYPD then issued another statement, noting that “the court appointed a court mediator to oversee settlement negotiations.”
“The court’s rules require all parties to such mediations to sign confidentiality agreements,” the statement added.
But NYCLU pushed back again, acknowledging that while NYPD’s statement was technically true, the agreement doesn’t prohibit the department from testifying and “doesn’t excuse them from showing up at a hearing.
“The mediation agreement says, ‘any communications made exclusively during or for the mediation process shall be confidential except as to the provisions indicated in this agreement.’ There’s simply no reason why that covers questions about the SRG or why that stops the NYPD from answering questions from the City Council,” NYCLU added.
