REUTERS/Brian Snyder
(New York, NY) — — A massive post-blizzard snowball fight in Washington Square Park on Monday has turned into a citywide controversy after a video of NYPD officers being pelted with snow and ice went viral. The snowball fight was promoted on Instagram by “Sidetalk”, a popular account with thousands of fans, including Mayor Mamdani who has made cameos in some of their videos.
On Monday, after 20 inches of snow clobbered the city, hundreds of “Sidetalk” fans started showing up in Washington Square Park in the later afternoon for the planned snowball event. A short time after the fight began police officers showed up to ask the group to reign it in a bit. The NYPD did not detail who may have complained, but eyewitnesses say officers were not asking the group to stop the snow event, but just to make sure they were hitting people with snow who wanted to be hit.
The festive mood of the event seemed to change the minute the officers arrived on the scene. Social media clips show some jeering the cops and then pelting officers at close range with snowballs. Other video shows some of the participants climbing to the top of a park restroom and throwing snow down on the officers below. Others taking part in the snowball fight then followed the officers as they tried to retreat to their their police vehicles continuing to hit them with snowballs. Two officers were hit so hard in the face and head that they ended up in the hospital needing medical attention for lacerations. Eyewitnesses claim some of the officers did fight back, with one cop shoving some members of the group to the ground.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch took to social media as word of the snowball fight spread and the videos were shared. She called the behavior of the snowball group “disgraceful” and “criminal”, and later warned: “Don’t mess with my cops”. The leaders of the city police unions condemned the snow attack, calling it vicious “Today it is snowballs. Tomorrow it could be rocks, bottles, or worse,” the Sergeants Benevolent Association union posted on X.
But Mayor Mamdani disagreed, even as police said they were searching for four of the people who attacked officers. He described the videos as “kids at a snowball fight” and said he did not believe the behavior warranted criminal charges. He then again repeated a line he had used before during the storm “The only person in our city’s workforce who deserves to be hit with a snowball is me”.
The NYPD says it still wants to bring four snowball throwers in for questioning. The police department says its is actively investigating the matter as a criminal case.
It’s the first open disagreement between the newly minted progressive Mayor and the moderate Police Commissioner he kept on from the Adams administration. Can the two get past it? That’s unclear, but what is clear is the Police Commissioner reportedly let her feeling be known during a closed door meeting with the mayor. That meeting did not seem to change the mayor’s stance on the snowball fight.
