Mamdani’s Nypd Troubles Are Snowballing

NEW YORK — For two days running, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani downplayed footage of police officers being pelted with snowballs in a Manhattan park. His top cop? Not so much.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch was up on social media immediately Monday to condemn the snowballers. The department then released information on four suspects wanted for assault. And on Thursday, as Mamdani quietly slipped away to Washington for a previously undisclosed meeting with President Donald Trump, officers made their first collar — in direct contradiction to the mayor’s wishes.

“As the mayor has said, police officers deserve to be treated with respect,” City Hall spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement following Thursday’s arrest. “The videos he saw showed a snowball fight that got out of hand. He does not believe this situation rises to the level of criminal charges.”

Later Thursday, Manhattan prosecutors threw a curveball into the frosty fracas by declining to prosecute an assault charge against the alleged cop-pelter, saying they would instead hit the defendant with a misdemeanor charge. Spokespeople for Mamdani and Tisch did not comment on the prosecutors’ decision to downgrade the charges.

Mamdani and Tisch have never been natural allies. He is a democratic socialist who previously lambasted the NYPD and called for it to be defunded. Tisch is a billionaire heiress beloved by Trump and first hired by the mayor’s law-and-order predecessor, Eric Adams. And she has modulated little since her new boss took over in January.

The two have taken opposite positions on NYPD tools like the gang database. They have differed on the role of low-level arrests in response to quality-of-life complaints. And earlier this week, even more daylight between Mamdani and his commissioner emerged over legislation that would create buffer zones between houses of worship and protesters following a highly charged demonstration outside a Manhattan synagogue in November.

Thursday’s arrest, however, is the clearest indication yet of the ideological rift between the two and an example of the tortuous balancing act that stands to play out for much of the mayor’s term: Mamdani’s public statements have been dismissive of concerns over the frosty fusillade — a stance that has appeased his base but infuriated police unions and more moderate New Yorkers. Yet he has taken no action to intervene in Tisch’s pursuit of the suspects, a move that will do just the opposite.

Welcome to snowball-gate.

During a standing meeting between Mamdani and Tisch at City Hall on Wednesday, they outlined their disparate views on the massive, preplanned snowball fight in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park two days earlier. As video footage showed, that battle royale featured two NYPD officers being peppered with snowballs and, as the NYPD would subsequently allege, chunks of ice that caused abrasions to the officers’ heads and necks.

According to a person with knowledge of the sitdown, Mamdani stuck to his belief that the incident did not warrant criminal charges. The mayor had publicly described the incident as kids throwing snowballs at officers. Tisch, however, made her disagreement with the mayor known, according to the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting.

That an arrest of a 27-year-old suspect was made a day later — with the NYPD still hunting for three others — underscores how much autonomy Tisch enjoys at the department and how fraught the issue of policing remains for Mamdani.

As soon as he became a real contender in last year’s mayoral race, the democratic socialist and longtime NYPD antagonist was under pressure to show he was serious about governing and had turned the page on his antipathy toward the police. Hence the decision, reached with a nudge from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, to retain Tisch in the first place.

The city’s newest odd couple immediately prompted questions about how they would govern, especially with points of tension appearing early. Tisch’s brother, an executive at the Loews Corporation, called Mamdani “an enemy” to the Jewish people at an awards ceremony, a remark the police commissioner later apologized for. At the duo’s first crime statistics briefing in January, Tisch talked up the department’s push for low-level arrests and use of a database cataloging known and suspected gang members — two policing tools loathed by the left. The mayor demurred in offering any pushback.

Thus far, disagreements between the two have remained mostly in the background compared to more prominent problems facing the city. And the person who spoke with POLITICO about Wednesday’s sitdown suggested Mamdani and Tisch remain in lockstep on bigger-picture issues.

“The city is still at one of the safest levels it’s ever been,” that person said.

But parallels are beginning to emerge with the cautionary tale of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who struggled to balance police reform with support for his cops over the course of two terms — a tightrope act made more difficult by the murder of two officers early in his tenure that instantly soured his relationship with rank-and-file cops.

Prominent figures on the left have yet to mount any serious criticism of the mayor over the snowball-related arrest and his general deference to Tisch. But pro-police forces are holding little back, primed by an incident earlier this month when Mamdani said a 22-year-old shot by officers in Queens should not have been charged with attempted assault. Body camera footage shows officers arriving to a mental health call at the man’s home moments before he approaches them brandishing a kitchen knife.

"The Mayor of New York City has now twice attempted to put his thumb on the scales of justice when police officers are either physically attacked or when their lives are threatened by an individual wielding a knife at them,” Vincent Vallelong, president of the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association, said in a statement. “The fact that the mayor has now called for no criminal charges against this assailant has set a very dangerous tone that the lives of NYC police officers don't matter. We will hold him personally responsible for any further attacks on the NYPD as a result of this reckless and incomprehensible message to violent offenders."

While Vallelong and his brethren are far from the median Mamdani voter, longtime media relations strategist Ken Frydman, who for years represented four of the NYPD’s six unions, argued Mamdani should ignore them at his peril. NYPD unions could make the mayor’s life a living hell by, for instance, ordering their members to engage in work slowdowns.

“Don’t fuck with cops,” Frydman said. “They’ll fuck you back harder.”