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Guest post by John D. Macari & Eric S. Dym
On March 1, New York City Council’s Committee on Public Safety convened to implement a plan to make the Big Apple less safe. The goal - disbanding the NYPD’s SRG (strategic response group), created in 2015 under former Police Commissioner William Bratton and part of the NYPD’s Special Operations Bureau. The SRG is designed to provide a large, rapidly deployable force of police for situations such as civil unrest, large-scale terrorist attacks, and special high-profile events.
The NYPD didn’t attend, though their presence was requested. This tells you everything you need to know about the relationship between the men and women in blue and one party Democrat rule.
Democrat Council Member Tiffany Caban testified that the NYPD’s SRG is a “rogue unaccountable squadron.” Democrat Public Advocate Jumaane Williams testified, “It appears their mission is more about suppressing speech and assembly and less about keeping everyone safe. The results of the SRG presence at protests has been aggressive and chaotic and has invariably escalated non-violent protests into dangerous and violent environments.” Williams continued, “According to a report which was published by the CCRB (Civilian Complaint Review Board),... it was only able to substantiate 88 of 321 complaints and the reason this number is so low is not because misconduct did not occur but rather NYPD officers engaged in purposeful actions to conceal their identity to avoid identification.” Williams clawingly looked to ratchet up the amount of complaints, dismayed they weren't higher.
The CCRB, which Williams references, is an independent civil department comprised of those that aren’t police and have no clue what sort of snap decisions police must make in order to protect themselves and the community. That being said, Arva Rice, interim chair of the CCRB, inadvertently noted the insanity of looking to disband the SRG and use CCRB as a vehicle to do so.
Rice testified, “When looking at all CCRB cases, the NYPD’s SRG makes up less than 1% of complaints since the group’s inception. A total of 472 SRG officers have received complaints and the CCRB has substantiated misconduct against 82 of them. The substantiation rate for SRG officers is approximately 10% higher than all CCRB complaints since 2015. Part of this can be explained by the 2020 protest cases [BLM]. The 2020 protests resulted in the highest rate of complaints the agency has ever seen with 300 complaints being filed in 48 hours. Given the large deployment of SRG to manage the protests, this resulted in a higher rate of complaints against SRG. 15% of the protest cases involved an SRG officer while regular CCRB cases involve a SRG officer less than 1% of the time. Fully investigated protest cases resulted in 88 substantiated cases, 28 of which involved an SRG officer. The low rate of substantiation for regular officers is largely due to the issue of identification. 43% of the allegations received stemming from the 2020 protests had to be closed because the officers involved could not be identified. A jump from 11% in non-protest cases.“
Translation, during the continuous BLM riots made possible by local New York City government, SRG was faced with the impossible task - having to do its job in an environment whereby leaders and bureaucrats make it Herculean.
I, John D. Macari Jr, a retired NYPD Lieutenant, virtually attended the City Council meeting and testified. I commented on the lack of evidence presented in support of disbanding the SRG. Rice herself explained that the uptick in complaints was correlated to the pervasive BLM riots. Furthermore, there was no plan offered as to which, if any, replacement for SRG within the NYPD would be tasked to deal with civic unrest, riots, and terror attacks.
The Democrats move to disband SRG is motivated by their general loathing for police. It’s void of statistics proving that police, when allowed to do their job, keep crime down. Moreover, there’s no substitution, such as “violence interrupters.” In fact, “violence interrupters” become casualties of the system - just ask Daniel Penny. But keeping crime down isn’t their goal. I stated that many of the violent riots during the summer of 2020 were mischaracterized as “peaceful protests” during the “Summer of Love” by local government and mainstream media in an effort to water down what occurred and mislead the public.
Testimony from Rice even supported that the SRG is better trained and equipped than all other members of the NYPD to respond to protests, periods of civil unrest and other large-scale events. Conclusion, Democrat leaders want rioters to riot unfettered.
John Macari & Eric Dym are both retired NYPD Lieutenants who retired in 2022 and worked throughout the protests of 2020. John Macari at one time during his tenure with the NYPD was the Commanding Officer of the CCRB Liaison Unit for the NYPD and Eric Dym has been branded as the NYPD’s “Most complained about Cop” ‘A title that was given for the amount of CCRB complaints he received during his tenure. Together they helm New York’s Finest: Retired & Unfiltered Podcast where they explore police related incidents, police policy and procedure as well as how legislation affects public safety in NYC
