What started as a friendly snowball fight on Feb. 23 culminated in an arrest and flared tensions between the mayor’s office and the NYPD.
The snowball fight, planned on social media, took place at Washington Square Park, a popular location for large-scale viral internet meet-ups.
The event was preplanned by SidetalkNYC as its third annual snowball fight, where people gathered and lobbed snow at each other. NYPD officers showed up responding to a 911 call about a disorderly group.
The video shows officers being pelted in the face with snowballs and having snow dumped on their backs before shoving nearby participants into the snowbank.
Police left the scene before any further escalation, with some taken to a nearby hospital with face and head injuries.
The event proved to have wider-reaching consequences, with the NYPD investigating the incident as assault and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch condemning the behavior, calling it “disgraceful” and “criminal.”
This contrasted the tone of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani during a press conference held on Feb. 25, where he was asked about the videos.
“What I saw yesterday in these videos was a snowball fight that got out of hand,” he said, adding that he didn’t believe the participants should be charged with a crime. “I believe that our officers, just like any city workers, deserve respect.”
The New York City Police Benevolent Association, a union representing more than 21,000 officers, called Mamdani’s statements a “failure of leadership” in a statement released on X.
“This was not just a ‘snowball fight,’” PBA President Patrick Hendry said. “This was an assault — by adults throwing chunks of ice and rocks — that landed two police officers in the hospital with head and face injuries.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul, despite recent shows of unity with Mamdani, weighed in on the side of the NYPD.
“Our police officers put themselves in harm’s way every single day, and there is no circumstance where it’s OK to throw anything at a police officer,” Hochul said in a post on X.
On Feb. 24, NYPD released images of four people wanted for questioning in regards to the incident, including Gusmane Coulibaly, a 27-year-old who was taken into custody in the early morning of Feb. 26 and charged with assaulting a police officer.
Hochul supported Coulibaly’s arrest. He was later allowed supervised release after his charges were reduced because prosecutors were unable to prove his actions caused the officers’ physical injuries. The PBA expressed anger with this decision.
“Why do they feel that that didn’t cause injury to our police officer, which he clearly has an injury below his eye, the same eye that they talked about,” Hendry said.
“We’ve all seen attacks,” Coulibaly’s attorney said. “We’re all New Yorkers. It didn’t look like an attack to me. Did it go a little past jokes and fun? Was it possibly a little disrespectful to the police? Yes.”
