New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday renewed his push to dismantle a key NYPD protest and crowd-control unit, while simultaneously calling for higher taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents due to a fiscal crisis.

Mamdani said he is moving forward with plans to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, or SRG, a specialized unit tasked with responding to protests, major events and civil unrest.

“Yes, I continue to believe that we need to disband the SRG,” Mamdani said, adding that he is in discussions with the police commissioner about how to wind down the unit in a way he described as operationally feasible.

The mayor claimed the move is a civil liberties issue, arguing that counterterrorism functions should be separated from policing of lawful protest activity.

“I believe that we should do so not on the basis of any fiscal need, but frankly, on the need to decouple the counterterrorism responsibilities within the department from police response to First Amendment exercise,” Mamdani said.

The SRG, according to the NYPD, is designed to respond to “citywide mobilizations, civil disorders, and major events with highly trained personnel and specialized equipment,” and has been deployed during large-scale demonstrations, parades and high-profile security events.

The call to dismantle the unit is likely to draw sharp pushback from police leadership and law enforcement advocates, who have argued that the SRG plays a critical role in managing volatile protests and maintaining public order in a city that routinely hosts mass demonstrations.

Mamdani’s comments came as he painted a bleak picture of the city’s finances, warning that New York is facing what he called a “serious fiscal crisis” and a projected budget shortfall of at least $12 billion.

He placed much of the blame on his predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, accusing him of underfunding essential services including rental assistance, shelter programs and special education.

“Eric Adams handed the next administration a poisoned chalice,” Mamdani said. “He systematically under budgeted services that New Yorkers rely on every single day.”

But Mamdani also broadened his criticism to Albany, accusing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo of extracting city resources to plug state-level budget gaps while shortchanging New York City.

“For over a decade, as he governed from Albany, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo extracted our city’s resources using our revenue to address state-level holes while withholding from the city what it was owed,” Mamdani said.

He pointed to what he described as a structural imbalance, noting that New York City contributes more than half of state revenue while receiving a significantly smaller share in return.

“The result is a stunning fiscal imbalance,” he said. “No part of this state gives more and gets less in return than New York City.”

To close the gap, Mamdani called for higher taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents and most profitable corporations, framing the proposal as both a fiscal necessity and a matter of economic fairness.

“We will meet this crisis with the bold solutions it demands,” Mamdani said. “That means recalibrating the broken fiscal relationship between the state and the city. And it means that the time has come to tax the richest New Yorkers and most profitable corporations.”

The mayor proposed an additional 2 percent income tax on the top 1 percent of New Yorkers, arguing that the city can stabilize its finances without placing additional burdens on lower- and middle-income residents.

“In the wealthiest city, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we can not only put our city back on firmer financial footing, but also build a stronger city for everyone if the top 1 percent of New Yorkers pay an additional 2 percent in income taxes,” he said.

Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for Cuomo, rejected Mamdani’s claims about Albany shortchanging the city, pointing to increases in state education funding and Medicaid support during Cuomo’s tenure.

“Zohran Mamdani needs to learn that being an executive is more than cosplaying in a custom designer made windbreaker,” Azzopardi said in a statement, adding that under Cuomo, state aid to New York City schools rose sharply and the state absorbed billions in Medicaid cost increases.

Azzopardi also noted that Cuomo inherited a major budget deficit and closed it through fiscal discipline, while accusing Mamdani — who served as a state legislator — of failing to address the very funding issues he now criticizes.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)