The New York Police Department is developing a new anti-terrorism unit that will be deployed, in part, to contend with protestors.
The “Strategic Response Group,” a unit of approximately 350 officers, will handle “disorder control and counterterrorism protection capabilities, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton announced Thursday, according to CBS New York.
The NYPD plans for the SRF to be outfitted with “the extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and the machine guns that are unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances,” Bratton said, according to the New York Post.
He also noted that the unit “is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.”
New York’s “recent protests,” includedemonstrations in response to a grand jury’s decision to not bring charges in the death of Eric Garner, who died after being placed in a chokehold by an NYPD officer. The same month, thousands of people marched through New York City to honor Garner and others who have lost their lives at the hands of police officers nationwide.
Civil rights activists were outraged by Bratton lumping in these kinds of demonstrations with terrorist attacks.
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