Two New York City defense attorneys who represented young men accused of throwing a snowball at an NYPD officer years ago are divided over whether the people who pelted officers in Washington Square Park on Monday should be charged with assault.<\/p>\n
Neil Wollerstein and Jeffrey Zeichner represented five young men who were arrested in 2010 after an off-duty police officer said they threw a snowball at him. The Bronx district attorney later dropped the charges and the men sued the city and won a payout.<\/p>\n
Wollerstein said the authorities should not arrest and charge the people caught on video hitting officers on Monday with what the police said was snow and ice.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s beyond over the top. It\u2019s absurd,\u201d Wollerstein said.<\/p>\n
Zeichner countered, \u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019re overplaying their hand. I think it is proper.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NYPD said this week that it is seeking four suspects for assaulting police officers after a pre-planned snowball fight at Washington Square Park. The incident touched off a storm of criticism from police unions and prompted contrasting responses from NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Zohran Mamdani.<\/p>\n
Tisch called the targeting of officers with snowballs \u201cdisgraceful\u201d and \u201ccriminal.\u201d The NYPD said two officers were taken to Greenwich Village Hospital in stable condition after being hit by the ice and snowballs.<\/p>\n
Mamdani said he viewed the incident as a snowball fight that got out of hand and said New Yorkers should not target NYPD officers with snowballs.<\/p>\n
Wollerstein and Zeichner found some common ground when discussing their case from years ago and the Washington Square Park snowball fight.<\/p>\n
They both agreed that the circumstances of the two incidents are vastly different. In their case, an officer encountered young men having an impromptu snowball fight on a Bronx street. He later admitted that he had never actually been hit by a snowball, the lawyers said.<\/p>\n
They also acknowledged that the police officers in Washington Square Park showed restraint and de-escalated the situation by walking away from the park as they were being showered with snowballs.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, they largely disagreed.<\/p>\n
Zeichner said if police officers were physically injured by people hurling chunks of ice at them, it likely constitutes an assault.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t throw chunks of ice at anyone, not just police officers, anyone. That\u2019s an assault,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that seeking prosecution is appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wollerstein said the NYPD should never have been called to respond to kids having a snowball fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cShouldn\u2019t the NYPD be policing and looking for real crime that\u2019s going on? Perhaps in the subway, perhaps somewhere else, as opposed to inserting themselves into a snowball fight that people are voluntarily participating in,\u201d Wollerstein said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom what I\u2019ve seen, the commissioner has now assigned detectives to investigate a snowball fight. You know, that\u2019s really not a good use of limited resources,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Longtime defense attorney Ron Kuby said separately that he thinks if the Washington Square Park suspects are arrested, they could be indicted \u2013 but securing a conviction could be tricky for prosecutors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be a very hard case to prove,\u201d Kuby said, adding that it might be difficult to show officers suffered actual physical injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other problem is: it was a snowball fight. We\u2019ve all been in snowball fights,\u201d Kuby added. \u201cI don\u2019t know if a jury is going to be inclined to convict under these circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two New York City defense attorneys who represented young men accused of throwing a snowball at an NYPD…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-491859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}