NYPD Commissioner: Because Terrorism And Protests Are Roughly The Same Thing, A New Special Unit Will Handle Both

Tuesday, February 3, 2015
By Paul Martin

by Tim Cushing
TechDirt.com
Tue, Feb 3rd 2015

The NYPD has created yet another special unit to handle the myriad problems that arise from being terrorists’ occasional target. The SRG (Strategic Response Group) will be tasked with handling certain situations, most of which did not occur in New York City.

“It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris,” the commissioner [Bill Bratton] said.

So… it’s designed for dealing with protests — the most recent of which were kicked off by the clearing of a cop who choked an unarmed man to death. The other two incidents have nothing to do with New York other than the fact that the NYPD sent its own officers overseas at the request of nobody.

Apparently, the new unit will be armed to the teeth, as behooves riot protest cops.

“They’ll be equipped and trained in ways that our normal patrol officers are not,” Bratton said. “They’ll be equipped with all the extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns — unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances.”

Or not, said the department when its new counterprotest unit began taking heat for Bratton’s conflation of terrorism and tying up traffic.

When asked if New Yorkers should expect to see police officers with “machine guns” at city protests, a spokesman for the NYPD told The Intercept, “No. They’re not carrying them at protests.” In general, however, the spokesman said officers would have access to the weapons “either on them or in their vehicles.”

The Rest…HERE

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