In 2016, when the Governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, criticized the province's disaster management agency, Sutopo defended him, saying that the governor's criticism should be taken as constructive input. The following year, after Basuki was arrested and imprisoned for religious blasphemy, Sutopo publicly praised the former governor on the latter's 51st birthday via Twitter for his success in reducing Jakarta's flooding. Following the 2018 Sunda Strait tsunami, Sutopo made a public remark that the tsunami early warning system in Indonesia was "still far from satisfactory".