Assaults against cops are snowballing.
Attacks against NYPD officers are up 3% in the first two months of the Mamdani administration when compared to the same period last year – and cops are fuming that his insulting attitude toward police is putting targets on their badges.
There have been 253 assaults on NYPD officers so far this year, counting the two cops pelted by snowballs and ice in Washington Square Park on Monday, according to NYPD data.
“The criminals and even some people who are sitting on the fence take their cues from the politicians and the prosecutors,” said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“They can say ‘I assaulted a cop and [Manhattan District Attorney] Alvin Bragg won’t prosecute me,’” he said. “‘I got the mayor advocating for me.’ So this is this is a golden opportunity. It’s going to be a long, hot summer is my prediction.”
There were no arrests during the incident in the famed Greenwich Village park.
Mamdani then repeatedly shrugged off the melee as a “snowball fight” and kids fooling around — but experts, cops and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch clapped back.
“A snowball fight is when you throw a snowball at me and I throw a snowball at you,” said Chris Herrmann, a retired NYPD officer and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“It’s not a snowball fight. It’s cops being attacked with snowballs.”
Some of the snowballs were the size of boulders, and many of the marauders were grown men, video shows.
Gusmane Coulibaly, 27, was eventually arrested and charged with felony assault, but Bragg threw out the assault charge. He was charged with harassment and obstruction of governmental administration — a lowly violation and misdemeanor, respectively.
The YouTube star had a prior arrest earlier in the month for an attempted robbery in the Brooklyn subway that he said was a prank he was filming for social media.
Tisch said Friday she “will not tolerate any attacks on my cops — period” during a promotion ceremony at One Police Plaza.
A police officer with more than two decades on the job said he and his coworkers are disgusted with Mamdani’s comments.
“He’s always told us that he doesn’t like us,” said the officer, who asked to remain anonymous because he’s not permitted to speak to the media. “Now he’s showing us that he doesn’t like us.”
Another veteran police officer said the people who attacked the officers were clearly out to hurt them.
“This was an ambush,” the officer said.
The frozen fracas is just the tip of the iceberg, critics said.
Mamdani, who has called for defunding the police in the past, posted on Twitter that cops were “racist,” “anti-queer,” “wicked,” and a “major threat to public safety” during the BLM riots of 2020.
He stopped his blatant anti-police rhetoric during the run-up to the 2025 mayoral election, but some police unions were angered over his support of a man who was shot after lunging at police officers with a knife in January.
The mayor visited Jabez Chakraborty in the hospital and said he shouldn’t face charges. Chakraborty, who is schizophrenic, was eventually indicted on attempted assault and weapons possession and held on $50,000 cash bail.
Recent high-profile assaults against NYPD officers included a scrum with migrant Tren de Aragua-linked punks in Times Square in May. In July, a female officer’s arm was bitten by a loon she was trying to arrest in the Flatiron District.
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said the increasing assaults “show why it’s dangerous for the mayor to downplay an attack on police officers.
“Assaults on our members have gone up because those who target police officers are becoming bolder and bolder,” the union boss said. “They don’t believe they’ll face any consequences. The environment isn’t going to change until the justice system and every leader in this city starts backing us up.”
Policing expert Michael Alcazar, a retired NYPD detective and adjunct professor at John Jay, said criminals “feel like they’re not going to get prosecuted.
“It’s the revolving door policy,” he said. “This guy, he’s charged with [obstructing governmental administration] and he’s out the next day. That sends the wrong message.”
