#NYPD’s Strategic Response Group preps for post-election riot
“#NYPD’s Strategic Response Group preps for post-election riot”
While Manhattan shopkeepers board up their businesses, the NYPD’s elite Strategic Response Group has been amping up tactical training for weeks now in anticipation of possible violence and unrest.
Their secret weapon is their bike squad, and the two-wheeled cops are deadly serious in their drilling.
They hurtle down the steep, forbidding 138 steps of the so-called “Joker” staircase in the Highbridge section of the Bronx, not far from SRG headquarters, in order to make sure they can handle their Trek bikes like BMX champs in the middle of a riot.
“Our game is always up,” Deputy Chief John J. D’Adamo, the veteran boss of the SRG, told the Post. “We’re hoping for the best this week but we’re prepared for the worst. People have gotten emboldened out there. We’re living through unprecedented times. But we’re prepared for whatever might happen.”
Even so, D’Adamo’s crew was shocked by the speed with which a mostly peaceful protest in Brooklyn Tuesday night turned violent. Six SRG police officers were injured in the melee that D’Adamo blamed on a small group of “radical anarchists” at the demonstration.
As a result they took no chances Wednesday when, trailed by a Post reporter and photographer, they flooded Brooklyn’s Fort Greene before another planned demonstration.
“Last night is not happening tonight!” D’Adamo yelled at his more than 125 officers, most on Trek bikes and sporting black protective “turtle gear” — a reference to the armor’s resemblance to the popular comic book heroes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — as they deployed around two parks where an 8 p.m. protest was scheduled.
At the same time, D’Adamo had another squad staged in lower Manhattan and units throughout the city.
D’Adamo’s words proved prophetic. The protesters reportedly got wind of the massive police presence and decided not to show up.
“Are we are deterrent?” D’Adamo said. “I’d like to think so. I hope they saw we meant business. We are all about de-escalation.”
The roughly 600 officers in the rapid deployment unit are specially trained to react quickly to bad situations, like civil unrest, active shooters and large-scale terrorist attacks.
On Wednesday night, the unit’s vans were crammed with bikes and everything from polycarbonate shields and fire extinguishers to Mace, and tourniquets and bandages.
The unit has increased its mobilization drills in recent months as cops and civilians brace for possible post-election turbulence.
“We aren’t against peaceful protests,” D’Adamo said. “The last thing we want to do is make arrests. We want people to be able to scream at the top of their lungs about whatever they want — and we also want them to finish what they have to do safely and get home safely.
“I want our officers to get home safely, too.”
That wasn’t the case Tuesday night in Brooklyn, where cops clashed with about 200 protesters marching in Fort Greene who left a trail of destruction in their wake following the Philadelphia police shooting death of a black man armed with a knife.
Protesters vandalized police vehicles, broke windows, torched an American flag and lit at least one rubbish fire. One cop suffered a leg injury when a car sped past a line of police officers after being ordered to stop. Police arrested 30 protesters.
“I was a cop during Occupy Wall Street and I thought that would be the worst I’d ever see but I was wrong,” an SRG officer who was injured in the protest Tuesday night told the Post. “In 16 years I’ve never seen anything like what’s going on now. We’re getting bottles, bricks, you name it thrown at us now.”
The officer, who did not want his name used, said he was on foot Tuesday night when police declared the protest an unlawful assembly and called on demonstrators to disperse.
“One of them rammed his bike into me and I fell to the ground,” the officer said.
The officer said he joined SRG after years on patrol because he wanted more action.
The SRG was formed in 2015 by then-Commissioner Bill Bratton after shutting down what had been called the Task Force unit. The cops in SRG were to be trained in high-tech weaponry to deal with protests, and “lone wolf” and terrorist attacks.
At the time, ISIS was a huge threat abroad and police feared it could strike in New York.
The SRG crew is made of the finest of New York’s Finest.
“It’s a completely voluntary unit,” D’Adamo said. “But we don’t take just anybody.”
D’Adamo says applicants must pass a fierce, one-hour verbal test designed to see if they can handle in-your-face confrontations. They also undergo five weeks of intensive heavy weapons, counter-terrorism, bike, Hazmat and medical training.
“We’re the Swiss Army Knife of police units,” Capt. David S. Miller told the Post before suiting up in turtle gear — sometimes called “God forbid gear” — and leading officers on bikes that night in Brooklyn. “We’ve got all the bases covered.”
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