NYPD SQUAD ‘GEARING’ UP FOR UNREST
Bike cops put the pedal to the mettle as election turmoil looms
Fearing riots after Tuesday’s election, New Yorkers are on edge — and that includes the NYPD.
While Manhattan shopkeepers board up their businesses, the NYPD’s elite Strategic Response Group has been amping up its tactical training for weeks now in anticipation of possible unrest.
Their secret weapon is their bike squad, and the two-wheeled cops are deadly serious in their drilling.
Not far from the SRG’s headquarters in The Bronx’s Highbridge section, the cops mount their Trek bicycles and hurtle down a steep 138-step set of stairs — famously featured in “Joker” — to make sure they can handle themselves like BMX champs in case of a riot.
“Our game is always up,” Deputy Chief John J. D’Adamo, the veteran boss of the SRG, told The Post. “We’re hoping for the best this week, but we’re prepared for the worst. People have gotten emboldened out there. We’re living through unprecedented times. But we’re prepared for whatever might happen.”
Even so, D’Adamo’s crew was shocked by the speed with which a mostly peaceful protest in Brooklyn Tuesday night turned violent. Six SRG police officers were injured in the melee that D’Adamo blamed on a small group of “radical anarchists” at the demonstration.
As a result, they took no chances on Wednesday when, trailed by a Post reporter and photographer, they flooded Brooklyn’s Fort Greene section before another planned demonstration.
“Last night is not happening tonight!” D’Adamo yelled at his more
than 125 officers, most on Trek bikes and clad in black body armor called “turtle gear” — or sometimes “God forbid gear” — as they deployed around two parks.
D’Adamo’s words proved prophetic. The protesters reportedly got wind of the massive police presence and decided not to show up.
“Are we are deterrent?” D’Adamo said. “I’d like to think so. I hope they saw we meant business. We are all about de-escalation.”
The roughly 600 officers in the rapid deployment unit are trained to react quickly to bad situations, like civil unrest, active shooters and large-scale terrorist attacks.
On Wednesday night, the unit’s vans were crammed with bikes and other gear including polycarbonate shields, active-shooter kits, fire-extinguishing kits, Mace and tourniquets and bandages.
The unit has increased its mobilization drills in recent months as cops and civilians brace for possible post-election upheavals.
“We aren’t against peaceful protests,” D’Adamo said. “The last thing we want to do is make arrests. We want people to be able to scream at the top of their lungs about whatever they want — and we also want them to finish what they have to do safely and get home safely.
“I want our officers to get home safely, too.”
That wasn’t the case in Brooklyn Tuesday night, when cops clashed with about 200 marchers in Fort Greene who left a trail of destruction in their wake following the Philadelphia police-shooting death of an unarmed black man.
Protesters vandalized police vehicles, broke windows, torched an American flag and lit at least one rubbish fire. One cop suffered a leg injury when a car sped past a line of police officers after being ordered to stop. Police arrested 30 protesters.
“I was a cop during Occupy Wall Street, and I thought that would be the worst I’d ever see but I was wrong,” an SRG officer who was injured in the protest told The Post. “In 16 years I’ve never seen anything like what’s going on now. We’re getting bottles, bricks, you name it thrown at us now.”
The SRG employs the finest of New York’s Finest.
“It’s a completely voluntary unit,” D’Adamo said. “But we don’t take just anybody.”
D’Adamo says applicants must pass a fierce one-hour verbal test designed to see if they can handle in-your-face confrontations. They also undergo five weeks of intensive heavy-weapons, counterterrorism, bike, hazmat and medical training.
“We’re the Swiss Army Knife of police units,” Capt. David S. Miller told The Post before suiting up in turtle gear and leading officers on bikes that night in Brooklyn. “We’ve got all the bases covered.”