New York City
Mamdani Signed The Hall Pass That Got His Own Allies Arrested
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
NEW YORK, NY: Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ran for office on a promise to disband the NYPD's Strategic Response Group, has spent the early months of his administration operating a permission-slip program that requires his own office to approve every SRG deployment at protests before a single zip tie comes out.
The program, which was not previously reported and which has produced zero instances of the mayor saying no, came to light after the SRG arrested a group of activists outside the United Nations General Assembly last week. Several of those activists were elected officials who had knocked on doors for Mamdani. At least two of them had been photographed with him at rallies where he called the SRG, and this is a direct quote from campaign materials, "a unit whose continued existence is a moral stain."
The NYPD confirmed the pre-clearance process to reporters on Monday. "We communicate with City Hall on this topic as we do on a host of things related to the department," a police spokesperson said, deploying a sentence so carefully constructed that it technically contains no information while technically answering the question.
The mayor was asked at a press conference whether he thought last week's arrests were an appropriate use of police resources. "I've been clear that my vision is for the disbanding of the SRG," he said. He was then asked why, given that his office controls the deployment switch, the SRG was deployed. The mayor was not asked a third question because the press conference moved on, which is the official New York City procedure for resolving a contradiction.
Former city council member and current Mamdani ally Deja Okafor, who was among those handcuffed outside the U.N., said from a midtown precinct holding room that she remained "fully confident in the mayor's commitment to police reform." She said this approximately forty minutes after a member of the unit the mayor is committed to abolishing photographed her fingerprints.
"He has a plan," she added. Nobody asked her what the plan was.
DSA chapters in three boroughs issued a joint statement calling the arrests "a troubling escalation" and asking the mayor to "urgently clarify" his position on a unit whose position he has clarified in writing, verbally, and apparently also by approving its deployment to the protest they were standing at when they were arrested.
The Mamdani administration declined to comment on why the mayor did not use his veto authority last week, or on how many times the pre-clearance system has been invoked, or on whether anyone in City Hall has noticed that a permission system where you grant every permission is just the original system with more paperwork.
The SRG, for its part, is still there.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/new-york-playbook-pm/2026/09/29/inside-mamdanis-fraught-effort-to-rein-in-the-nypd-unit-he-pledged-to-end-01097516