The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office says that they have dropped the assault charges against a 27-year-old Bronx man arrested for throwing snowballs at NYPD officers in Washington Square Park.<\/p>\n
Police arrested Gusmane Coulibaly on Thursday. He was initially charged with assaulting a police officer, obstruction of governmental administration and disorderly conduct.<\/p>\n
After reviewing the evidence, the Manhattan DA’s Office says they are unable to prove the officer was directly injured by Coulibaly\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
Coulibaly is still facing charges of obstruction of governmental administration and harassment.<\/p>\n
They say Coulibaly was arrested two weeks ago on an attempted robbery charge.<\/p>\n
The Police Benevolent Association called the snowball fight an \u201cattack on police officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
President Patrick Hendry said, \u201cThis was ice chunks. This was rocks. And this was an attack on police officers. This was a message that was sent, in regards to anyone who dares put their hand on a New York City police officer. That you will be arrested now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opinions among parkgoers were divided. Michael Etheridge expressed sympathy for the officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of kind of anti-police sentiment at the moment. It\u2019s unfortunate because people are just trying to do their jobs. Obviously, the officers, I\u2019m sure, didn\u2019t want to be out on a snowy day trying to police people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Others viewed the incident as an overreaction.<\/p>\n
Debbie Nathan called the arrest \u201cdisgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looked like a fun snowball fight. The idea that people are being arrested for that is disgusting to me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Another parkgoer, Elicia, said, \u201cI think they should respect the police officers. I don\u2019t believe they should have done that. Maybe give them a summons or they should pay something, but not to that extreme. You mess up somebody\u2019s life with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The incident renewed discussion about how to handle such confrontations in public spaces. While police insist that the arrest sends a clear message about attacking officers, Mayor Mamdani continues to downplay the event, calling it \u201cjust a snowball fight,\u201d a stance that police say fails to recognize the severity of the attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office says that they have dropped the assault charges against a 27-year-old Bronx man…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-146935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-the-bronx","13":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","14":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}