A blizzard brought New York to a standstill on 23 February, with schools across the city closed. Restless young people without anywhere to go began to gather in Washington Square Park, summoned by Instagram chatshow Sidetalk, which wanted to stage an almighty snowball fight. A sea of young men in ski goggles gathered, armed with phones in one hand and balls of ice in the other. Cannonballs of snow flew across the sky. Others backflipped off snowmen or wrestled on the snow. The scene was of good-natured pandemonium.
“But it started getting chaotic once people were throwing gigantic blocks of ice. That’s when I left,” says Gabriella Yankovich who stopped by on her lunchbreak. “Boys being boys.”
Within an hour, there were 911 calls about teens climbing a park building and pelting those inside, and the New York police department increased its presence in the park.
But the dozen or so officers received an icy reception. They were swarmed and pummeled with snowballs. Social media was later flooded with images of snow raining down on officers.
What began as a viral stunt has snowballed into a larger, high-stakes clash between Mamdani and the NYPD that comes at a politically delicate moment. After winning the mayoral race in November, Mamdani announced he would be keeping Tisch as commissioner, despite her track record of increasing surveillance and shielding officers from discipline, at odds with the more progressive policies Mamdani promised. Political analysts said Mamdani kept Tisch on to assuage concerns that he would be soft on crime and against the police.
Dipshits who already hated Mamdani continue to hate Mamdani. The real news here is that the prosecution was forced to drop that ridiculous felony charge down to a petty misdemeanor. That kind of “overcharging to force a plea” bullshit ought to be stopped.
And punished if attempted
[The NYPD] think it’s a slippery slope where a snowball today can turn into a rock tomorrow and then a gun later on
what dementia-addled moron strung those words together?
A cop.
And that gun could turn into a bazooka and later on that bazooka could turn into a Dracula
Vampire robot president powers activate! Get me my adrenomoxodilplutoniumsulfate!
And then dracula had a baby and the baby looked at me!
I know you’re here, Dracula, you big fucking nerd. Where’s my god damn money?
But Maria Haberfeld, professor of police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, insists that because officers are outnumbered by the public, they cannot enforce the law if their presence isn’t automatically respected.
“This is not as benign as people want to portray. Once the public shows lack of compliance, that’s the end of law enforcement,” she says.
Have you tried to think about why they arent being respected? Maybe because they dont respect others and are therefore not worthy of respect?
Also, respect is not created through fear. You can’t scare people into respecting you by increasing the penalties for noncompliance. If anything you run the risk of further destroying what little respect might still remain.
Also the goal shouldnt be “compliance” (with orders) it should be “adherence” (to laws) so this shows the inherent cancer at the root of the police system. Its a safe haven for people with power fantasies.
They do want fear, though.
The whole thing with police marching through a snowball fight seemed contrived. Imo, the officers involved should be fired for participating in such a clear stunt.
