Mayor Eric Adams at the funeral of slain NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, who was killed in a Midtown mass shooting on Monday, July 28. Thursday, July31, 2025.
Photo by Dean Moses
Mayor Eric Adams saluted on Thursday a controversial NYPD unit for its response to the Midtown mass shooting this week in what appeared to be a jab at his general election opponent, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, who has vowed to disband the group.
During the Bronx funeral service for fallen Officer Didarul Islam, one of the shooting’s four victims, Hizzoner praised the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG) for its handling of the incident just a day after Mamdani confirmed that he still plans to disband the unit.
“I want to say thank you to the men and women of the New York City Police Department in general, but specifically to the men and women of SRG,” Adams said. “They entered the building while the shooter was still alive, and they conducted a floor-by-floor search. They wanted to ensure that everyone in that building would have come out safely.”
The shooting, which took place in a Park Avenue office building on Monday evening, was carried out by a lone gunman who took his own life after killing Islam and three other people, according to police.
Adams, a Democrat running as an independent after skipping the party’s primary, made the remarks just feet away from Mamdani, who was reportedly sitting with Islam’s family during the service. Mamdani — who, like Islam, is Muslim and South Asian — was invited by the late officer’s family a day after meeting with them upon his return from a trip to his native country of Uganda.
The mayor’s remarks followed Mamdani — a Queens Assembly member — on Wednesday reaffirming that he would nix the SRG if he is elected mayor due to what he described as its heavy-handed tactics in policing protests. He originally floated dismantling the unit in a social media post late last year.
The SRG has been fiercely criticized by left-leaning pols, government watchdogs, and police reform advocates who say it is not properly trained and needlessly escalates tensions when responding to protests.
“What we have seen is an inability to follow the rules and regulations that protects the rights of all those New Yorkers who exercise them,” Mamdani said during a Wednesday news conference. “What I am interested in as an outcome is how to live up to that city where New Yorkers need not choose between safety and justice, where both are delivered, and that means … ensuring that we do not settle for misconduct lawsuit after misconduct lawsuit as it pertains to protests.”
Mamdani told reporters on Wednesday that he would replace the SRG with another unit designed to specifically respond to emergencies like Monday’s mass shooting, but not protests.
“What we saw on Monday was an example of how we would want a response to look like to an emergency,” Mamdani said. “There is a need to ensure that every act we take is one that is actually delivering public safety. And what we see right now, especially with regards to how we respond to protest, is not in line with that.”
Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is also challenging Mamdani as an independent, have been hammering him over his stance on the SRG and his other past criticisms of the police in the days since the shooting.
The mayor called the idea of breaking up the SRG “extremely dangerous,” and Cuomo said that stance shows Mamdani “doesn’t understand government, and he doesn’t understand public safety, and he is dangerous in that regard.”
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