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Can Columbus, Ohio teach the NYPD about crowd control? Mamdani wants to find out.
By
Charles Lane
and
Ben Feuerherd
Published Apr 13, 2026
Modified Apr 13, 2026
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By
Charles Lane
and
Ben Feuerherd
Published Apr 13, 2026
Modified Apr 13, 2026
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What can a bunch of Buckeyes teach the vaunted NYPD about managing big crowds?
Polite conversation, apparently.
A delegation of City Hall and NYPD officials traveled to Columbus, Ohio, last week to study a protest policing model that Columbus officials say emphasizes conversation and de-escalation over mass arrests and aggressive force.
In some ways, the Columbus approach is very much like strategies the NYPD says it’s already implementing — putting officers whose primary job is to foster dialog, gain intel and build relationships on the frontlines of protests. More heavily armed teams prepared to deal with violent situations hang back until they’re needed.
City officials say the Columbus junket was meant to inform the ongoing conversation between the NYPD and Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration around a unit accused of brutal tactics in the past — specifically the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. Mamdani first proposed looking at Columbus during the campaign.
Mamdani campaigned on disbanding the unit, called the Strategic Response Group, or SRG. He has repeatedly said he still plans to “decouple” the policing of First Amendment activity from counterterrorism functions — both of which are currently the remit of SRG.
Policing experts and current and former officials say the methods used in Columbus are worth exploring and that many have already been adopted by the NYPD since the chaos of 2020. But some cautioned that the approach of open dialog still had to come with the assurance of force, should violence break out.
“We want to strategize on how to facilitate peaceful protests rather than how to control it,” said Anthony Raganella, a retired NYPD deputy inspector who was instrumental in creating the SRG.
But he cautioned that when people are put in harm’s way, “ We have to take action and we have to control at that point what's going on to stop criminal activity.”
Similar to the NYPD, Columbus overhauled its protest policing after a widely criticized response to 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Federal judges condemned both departments for their indiscriminate use of force, and both cities paid significant financial penalties for their actions.
Experts who studied the Columbus model said it took time for their protest police to gain the community's trust and suggested SRG may need more time to prove it adopted the rules of the settlement agreement.
"I would give them a little bit of time rather than making hasty decisions,” said Russell Hassan, professor at Ohio State University who studies Columbus’ police department. "Go and observe them when they actually manage the protest. Because when you observe them, that's when you know whether things are different or not."
Hassan said Columbus’ approach was led by police executives who did their own research, visiting other police departments to better understand new methods of controlling crowds.
"The key to success is essentially when you have people who are pushing this from internally, rather than it is imposed from top down,” Hassan said.
According to a paper he coauthored with Columbus police commanders, the model is built around keeping heavy police forces as far from protesters as possible.
At the front line are the dialogue officers, patrol volunteers selected for their communication skills, wearing regular uniforms with distinct blue vests. Their job is to engage with organizers before, during and after events, building trust and relaying real-time information to commanders.
NYPD officials described a similar strategy where community affairs officers talk to protest leaders and gather intelligence in a conversational way while the SRG is several blocks away.
At a budget hearing last month, Tisch downplayed the mayor’s concerns with SRG saying the unit was not on site for the beginning of most protests.
“It’s going to be primarily our community affairs officers and sometimes patrol officers who will be people policing the protests,” she said. “SRG is not deployed in those instances.”
Tisch said that in 2025, the SRG was deployed to stand by blocks away from 245 protests, about 6% of the city’s 4,255 protests. She said it only participated in protest arrests roughly 1% of the time.
Elle Bisgaard-Church, Mamdani’s chief of staff, told "Inside City Hall" on Friday that the NYPD had challenges in many protests “especially in 2020 and later” and praised the techniques used by Columbus police.
"It's a commitment on the scene to really transparent knowledge-sharing — what's going on at a protest — to de-escalating,” she said. “Just an overall embedded nature of their dialogue teams with community groups."
Hasan referred to the Columbus Dialogue team as the “tip of the spear” for protest interaction. He said Columbus’ heavily armed tactical unit has never interacted with the crowd at more than 30 protests he observed. Across more than 60 events over two years, including large unpermitted marches, armed militia demonstrations and neo-Nazi rallies, the model produced only three arrests and two minor uses of force, according to his paper.
Raganella, the former NYPD inspector, said he was very encouraged that the department is studying Columbus’ approach.
“In essence communication is the primary strategy, not the fallback,” he said. “We don't want to approach protests and demonstrations with the attitude of ‘we're the police, we need to be able to control this.”
But the NYPD is not like any other department. Protest crowds will never be as big as they are in America’s biggest city, where crowds of 1 million people are not a rare occurrence. And a lot more terrorists are targeting the Big Apple — which is one of the most densely populated regions in the world and home to financial markets as well as the United Nations — than Columbus, Ohio.
Raganella cautioned that dialogue-based protest policing should not be treated as the only option available to a department like the NYPD.
“Again, basically it's, it's a tool to be used at the right time and the right place,” he said.
City Hall officials said the trip was to learn about the initial reluctance, even Columbus police had with changing the way the police protests.
Seven officials made the trip, which cost $5,000, according to City Hall and NYPD officials.
The City Hall contingent was Ramzi Kassem, counsel to the mayor; Bisgaard-Church, the mayor's chief of staff; Freddi Goldstein, the first deputy mayor's chief of staff; and Abdul Rad, a policy adviser. The NYPD sent Deputy Commissioner for Strategic Initiatives Alex Crohn, Assistant Chief of Operations Gerry Dowling and Assistant Chief of Community Affairs Bureau Victoria Perry.
This story has been updated with new information from the NYPD and City Hall.
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Charles Lane
Charles is a Day-of reporter focused on breaking news and enterprise. He’s very friendly and can be reached at [email protected], or more securely on whatsapp/signal 631-295-6715
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Ben Feuerherd
Ben Feuerherd covers public safety and policing for WNYC and Gothamist. He previously covered federal courts for The New York Post and The Messenger. His work has also appeared in POLITICO, the Daily Beast and NBC New York. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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