Former three-term Gov. George Pataki ripped Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for downplaying an icy snowball attack on NYPD officers.
The Republican said it’s no wonder a recent poll found that one-third of Empire State residents are considering moving elsewhere.
“They talk about a snowball fight where the police had snowballs thrown at them. That’s not the case,” Pataki fumed Sunday on 77 WABC radio’s the “Cats Roundtable” program. “This was an assault upon New York City police officers where they threw snowballs, yes, but also rocks and ice. It was a deliberate assault … and yet our city and our state are doing nothing.
“It’s just part of a continuing decline in the quality of life and the support of the police,” he went on. “District Attorney Bragg, Mamdani, and the rest say, ‘Oh, let them go. It’s not a big deal.’ Well, it is a big deal …We don’t have the respect for the police.”
Mamdani described the free-for-all in Washington Square Park as a “snowball fight that got of hand” while two officers were sent to the hospital for injuries. The NYPD was called in to break up the melee.
“And what I’ve said in regards to the snowball fight is that it’s a snowball fight that got out of hand, and I don’t really have much more to say,” he told reporters last week.
Bragg’s prosecutors then declined to level a police-assault charge against accused cop-pelter and YouTuber Gusmane Coulibaly, claiming officials couldn’t confirm the 27-year-old man’s alleged actions physically injured a responding officer. Coulibaly did face other charges, though.
Pataki claimed the supposed soft-on-crime approach is part of a pattern of ignoring quality of life concerns, citing basic items in drug stores locked up because of rampant shoplifting and dangerous mentally ill people roaming the streets.
“What drives me nuts and it gets my blood boiling is that this is all preventable,” he told WABC radio host John Catsimatidis.
NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association President Vincent Vallelong warned the problem of disrespecting cops will only get worse when the weather warms up because Mamdani is setting a bad message.
“The degradation of what took place in Washington Square Park and what happened to these cops … is just going to expand when you have a mayor that sits back and frivolously looks at these things and paints them as being a children’s snowball fight,” Vallelong said on a separate 77 WABC “Cats Roundtable” segment.
“This was lawlessness,” he added. “There’s no other way to describe this. It wasn’t a group of kids. It was a mob … They were disrespectful. They were assaulting the police officers. How is it that you have an individual in this mayor that he refuses to call an assault an assault?”
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch condemned the attacks on her officers.