CounterterrorismNYPD launches counterterrorism unit

In the coming months, the New York Police Department (NYPD) patrol officers will spend more time visiting community members to learn about their public safety concerns, but the department has also launched a new unit, consisting of officers equipped with high-powered weapons that could be used for both keeping protests from becoming unruly and guarding terrorist targets such as Times Square.

The Strategic Response Group (SRG), announced last Thursday, will soon respond to terror threats throughout the city, said Police Commissioner William J. Bratton.

For decades, the NYPD Emergency Service Unit handled many assignments requiring special weapons and tactics, but post-9/11, the NYPD also created heavily armed units known as Hercules teams. The SRG will now allow the city to handle certain emergencies without having periodically to take officers and squad cars from each precinct. “They’ll be equipped and trained in ways that patrol officers are not,” Bratton said. “It will allow us to staff important programs like site protection and critical-response vehicles — or CRV — without using precinct personnel.”

Bratton, since returning last year to lead the NYPD, has been tasked with improving the department’s relationships with local communities, but he is also faced with the increasing threat of lone-wolf terrorists, as counterterrorism officials warn that the recent attacks in Paris could have occurred in New York. In his State of the NYPD address to the Police Foundation, Bratton stressed that while the NYPD must maintain positive relationships with the public, the department must also be able to quickly respond to big events including terror attacks.

TheNew York Times reports that since Bratton’s return, efforts have been underway to fulfill a “new patrol model” which incorporates a wide range of features, from equipping more officers with stun guns and improved bulletproof vests, to better community policing and outfitting the entire patrol force with body cameras. In one case, rookie officers in the 47th Precinct in the Bronx are now responsible for making and keeping up with their local contacts. Recently, officers in some parts of the city handed out movie tickets to young people for a showing of Selma.

The NYPD will also test out a “highly localized neighborhood policing plan” in two precincts in Manhattan and two in Queens, in which officers focus on small sections of neighborhoods and are allowed more time to do so without having to respond to emergency calls outside of those neighborhoods. According to Bratton, the move would reduce the number of patrol officers who currently find themselves in either specialty roles or “running from call to call” in a department that “does not have enough police officers.”

Those efforts, however, have received less attention than the move to equip roughly 350 officers with heavy protective gear and machine guns, as well as training in counterterrorism tactics and “advanced disorder control.” “It (SRG) is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris,” Bratton said, referring to the 2008 terrorists attacks in India and the January attacks in Paris.

Police reform advocates have criticized plans for the new unit. It is “the opposite of progress,” said Priscilla Gonzalez, organizing director of Communities United for Police Reform. “Initial reports of Commissioner Bratton’s plans suggest the opposite of progress. His demands for less oversight of the NYPD and a more militarized police force that would use counter-terrorism tactics against protesters are deeply misguided and frankly offensive.”

Since Bratton’s announcement, the NYPD has “clarified” that the SRG will only work on counterterror initiatives. SRG “will not be involved in handling protests and demonstrations. They’ll have no role in protests. Their response is single-fold. They’ll be doing counter-terror work. They’ll be assigned to different posts throughout the city,” Chief of Department James O’Neill told the New York Daily News.