NEW YORK\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A counterprotester demonstrating against a \u201cStop the Islamic Takeover of New York City\u201d event Saturday lighted and threw a device containing nuts, bolts and screws at the protesting crowd after someone from that group used pepper spray on the counterprotesters, police said. <\/p>\n
Police are investigating the incident that started late Saturday morning when someone from the anti-Islam protest associated with far-right activist and pardoned Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang shot pepper spray into a counterprotesting group near the mayoral residence Gracie Mansion, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. <\/p>\n
Tensions continued to heighten, she said, when one of the counterprotesters lighted and threw a device she described as smaller than a football into the protesting crowd of about 20 people. <\/p>\n
The device struck a barrier and extinguished itself \u201ca few feet from police officers,\u201d she said. The same person then ran, and another person gave a him a second device, which they then dropped. The devices were wrapped in black tape with nuts, bolts and screws, as well as a fuse. She said it was unclear whether the devices were functioning explosives or hoaxes. <\/p>\n
Three people were arrested, and an investigation is underway, Tisch said. <\/p>\n
Tisch at a news conference didn\u2019t report any injuries and said she believed Mayor Zohran Mamdani was not at Gracie Mansion at the time. <\/p>\n
She said about 20 people showed up to Saturday\u2019s protest connected to Lang, and the counterprotest had about 125 people at its peak. <\/p>\n
Lang was charged with assaulting a police officer with a baseball bat, civil disorder and other crimes before receiving a pardon as part of President Trump\u2019s sweeping act of clemency for Jan. 6 defendants last year. Lang recently announced that he is running for U.S. Senate in Florida.<\/p>\n
Last month, Lang staged an anti-Islam protest in Minneapolis during the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown there. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A counterprotester demonstrating against a \u201cStop the Islamic Takeover of New York City\u201d event Saturday lighted and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64714,64716,64715,26901,64720,12558,64713,64719,9,24,55,54,64717,56,1232,11142,104,64718,64721],"class_list":["post-156608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-anti-islam-protest","tag-bolt","tag-counterprotester","tag-device","tag-event-saturday","tag-jan","tag-lang","tag-mayoral-residence-gracie-mansion","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-nut","tag-ny","tag-people","tag-pepper-spray","tag-police","tag-screw","tag-sweeping-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156608","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=156608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}