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Mayor Zohran Mamdani is scrambling to save face with Darializa Avila Chevalier and other increasingly frustrated city socialists after he put a campaign promise to scrap an elite NYPD unit on the “backburner,” The Post has learned.
Hizzoner issued an urgent mandate to police brass and City Hall officials last month to cobble together police policy change about the department’s Strategic Response Group, or SRG, a counter-terrorist and protest unit, according to sources with knowledge of the talks.
Mamdani, who took office this year, is trying to craft a move that would appease his base about the ignored campaign vow while juggling the realities of policing in the Big Apple, the sources added.
“It wasn’t really a priority,” said one source with knowledge, adding that the talks had started earlier this year but proved to be seemingly too complicated to navigate politically and were put off.
“It was on the backburner,” they added.
The hasty order from the mayor came in response to House member-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier, whom Mamdani endorsed in June. The liberal firebrand had dragged the police commissioner online, calling for her to resign and for the SRG to be disbanded, the insiders noted.
A potential disbandment has proved to be a near-impossible task, without leaving the country’s largest police force without a terror or mass casualty response unit, according to sources.
But anything short of eliminating the unit for good could fall far short in the eyes of the far-left wing of his party, including Chevalier, who won in New York’s 13th Congressional District primary in large part from the mayor’s endorsement.
Darializa Avila Chevalier and New York City Mayor Mamdani speak at a Get Out the Vote rally at Thomas Jefferson Park in Manhattan on Saturday, June 13, 2026. Robert Miller for NY Post
Chevalier, a defund the police and prison abolitionist, sparked the mayoral backlash from the left in mid-October when she accused the SRG of misconduct after she was pushed during an unruly protest. She was captured on camera getting in the face of cops, screaming.
The claim came even though the SRG didn’t respond to the protest.
Regardless, she and City Councilman Chi Osse used the incident as a jumping-off point to launch a pressure campaign on the council’s public safety chair, Oswald Feliz (D-Bronx), to move a bill to ban the SRG.
The two DSA members notably never mentioned Mamdani despite him overseeing the NYPD and campaigning on the ban.
The calls started to gain momentum with others in the far-left wing of the party echoing those calls.
Mamdani’s team was openly bemoaning the firebrand, telling folks they were “pissed” that she was attacking one of their own, The Post exclusively reported previously. But the spat proved to be difficult to handle since Chevalier is also dating the mayor’s City Hall attorney, Ramzi Kassem.
The sources with knowledge of the SRG talks said the conversations have picked up in recent days, and an announcement will be made “pretty soon.”
The insiders believed policy change could come down as early as next week — however, the specifics have not yet been finalized.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch faced calls to resign in recent weeks. Robert Miller for NY Post
The dissent on the left has since died down — and Chevalier and Osse were both spotted meeting with the mayor at City Hall in recent days.
The SRG, which responds to violent protests and terrorist attacks, has been a flashpoint among lefties — claiming it has no place in the NYPD. Law enforcement critics have called to ban it from First Amendment demonstrations.
Proponents argue the SRG is a necessary elite unit that could make the city vulnerable to attacks if disbanded. It is the main group of cops that responds to mass shootings, such as the deadly Park Avenue incident last year.
Protests are far from the SRG’s core mission, only responding when arrests have to be made, or the demonstrations are no longer peaceful.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, Democratic nominee for New York’s 13th district, was arrested at the UN by the SRG. Matthew McDermott for NY Post
So far this year, the unit only responded to just over a dozen protests and made fewer than 10 arrests, the majority of which were for blocking traffic, according to sources.
Chevalier and Osse appear to have accounted for two of those arrests outside the United Nations when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke last month.
It faced severe backlash after instances of kettling and using bikes for crowd control during the George Floyd protests, but as part of a civil suit, many of those tactics are now banned.
