Of Molehills, Mountains and Snowballs

At this rate, we might have to rename the West Village’s Washington Square Park the Place Where That Snowball Fight Happened. For the moment, that great public space has been redefined by an incident in which a social media-generated snowball fight in the aftermath of a blizzard devolved into a crowd of people pelting NYPD officers in the back, chest and head with snow and ice. The officers were responding to 911 calls that the event had turned disorderly, and within seconds, a few people turned from hurling snowballs at each other to targeting the police. As the officers beat a retreat, they were hit again and again by members of a jeering crowd that seemed to delight in watching them wince and grimace.

The snowball fight has taken on a life of its own, aggravated by the comments of the city’s political actors. Politicians, activists, and the commentariat writing off the forceful pelting of cops with snowballs as a minor kerfuffle or all in good fun are wrong. Clobbering police officers with snowballs as they try to assess a situation and determine what to do, knowing it could hurt them and will definitely humiliate them, long after they have made it clear they aren’t there to participate, is dangerous and undermines the function of city government by normalizing the disrespect and mistreatment of its police.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who rightly expressed some concern about the incident, should’ve been more alarmed by how the NYPD was treated and called for a more decisive response by the city, acknowledging that a crime — even if it was a minor one — had been committed. Instead, he insisted it was a minor incident that should be put to rest without further action: “I've said that what I saw was a snowball fight. It should be treated accordingly. It was one that got out of hand. But that's what it was.” But contrary to the claims of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and hardened critics of everything Mamdani that the incident amounts to a series of violent felonies that call for prison time, this doesn’t indicate a rampant crisis of disrespect for the city’s police. It is more like the usual actors responding to a police-involved incident as we’ve come to expect: by either dismissively brushing it off, or treating it as the crime of the century.

In 2012, when I was commanding the NYPD’s 6th precinct, which covers the West Village, I policed a massive pillow fight in the same park. It consisted of no less than 1,000 people spending hours hitting each other with pillows. Like the snowball fight, it was social media-generated, done without a permit (and therefore technically unlawful), and intended to be harmless. Feathers and other pillow parts wafted into the air and left the park a mess, but otherwise it went off without a hitch. 

The reason it remained a recreational pillow fight and not a free-for-all was that we sent several officers to the location, cordoned off an arena for the fight, and made sure it didn’t disrupt anyone else using the park. I coordinated the police response from a perch atop the park’s memorial arch, accessed by a secret stairwell. The participants respectfully followed our instructions, ended the event when we asked them to, and didn’t target bystanders. More important than our attempt to control the crowd through a police presence, nobody got it in their head to run up to cops and relentlessly hit them with pillows. If that were anything more than brief and playful, or looked anything like how the crowd treated the police in the park on Monday, we would have shut the event down and arrested the people who impeded police operations.

Hitting police officers in the head with snowballs might be funny or even cute if you’re six years old, but not if you’re a grown man. Repeatedly throwing snow and ice at someone’s face is not good-natured frolic. Anyone who has been hit square in the head with a snowball, let alone an icy one, knows this. But since the line between winter fun and aggression can be blurry, and the most common snowball fight is indeed consensual, it is the type of act people exploit to harass or hurt someone under the cover of play. Think of it as a more dangerous version of a child twirling a finger inches from a sibling’s face while saying “but I’m not touching you,” or a protester thrusting a phone camera inches from a police officer’s face and following them around while insisting they are doing nothing more than exercising their rights. 

In the latter case, the person can be arrested for impeding the officer. The same logic applies to hurling snowballs at police who are trying to do their job, except it can also be injurious. As a police officer, I’ve seen people bullied to tears by a mob hitting them in the face with snowballs, as a parent, I’ve seen it result in bruises, and as a teacher, my wife has seen it cause eye injuries.

It is a crime, (s)no(w) exception, to throw anything at anyone in public without their consent if it doesn’t serve a legitimate purpose and causes annoyance, alarm or injury. This is a settled matter under New York State Penal Law. The only questions are whether the crime is disorderly conduct, harassment or assault, and whether it is a violation, misdemeanor or felony. This includes throwing snowballs at police officers. When the act also prevents officers from performing their job, you have the additional charge of obstructing government administration. While I doubt the offenses rise to the level of a felony assault against an officer, which are reserved for cases of intentional physical injury or use of a weapon, it doesn’t mean the crowd’s actions weren’t criminal in nature, deserving of a response that holds people accountable and sets the tone for the future.

It’s true, in the past, police officers have engaged in snowball fights with members of the public. But those incidents were generally congenial and voluntary, and the police weren’t dispatched to the fight by 911 after citizens called them to the scene. In the case here, the throwers were not children laughing along with the police; the emerging account is that the incident consisted of adults and teenagers repeatedly throwing snow and ice at officers long after it was extremely clear the officers wanted no part of it, and it was a form of aggression. When you watch the videos, the pelting intensifies even as officers take the hits passively, on the retreat, and show obvious discomfort and stress at being struck in the head. If anything, all of this seemed to just embolden some of the participants, leading frustrated officers to shove people out of their path and threaten the use of pepper spray. If their jeering and relentless persistence were any indication, those throwing the snowballs were attempting to humiliate police officers in a way that could injure them.

That’s why Mamdani’s response missed the mark. To understand what I mean, you only have to imagine the mayor’s likely reaction to treating anyone else this way. Picture nurses going to work being pelted with snow by a crowd, or law professors walking to NYU getting repeatedly hit in the head with snow and ice while being cursed at. Picture the Parks Department employees who keep Washington Square Park clean being treated this way, or Sanitation workers picking up trash being hit by a crowd while they fled. Finally, imagine congregants exiting a mosque, synagogue, or church, maliciously hit in the head with snowballs at close range, long after they made it clear that they wanted no part of it. 

So what makes Monday’s incident different? I only see two ways it could be. One is if a person thinks the New Yorkers who work as police are less deserving of their dignity and safety than everyone else. When I read the bios of the people who’ve made the most strident defenses of the crowd in the park, I can’t help but conclude many of them are looking for reasons to be glad the responding officers were humiliated, because they don’t like the police. The other way it could be different is if you have lived a life where you have never been surrounded by bullies who used the pretext of a snowball fight to hurt you. The most charitable explanation is therefore that the mayor has never had this happen to him, and so he has no idea what it feels like. Nobody deserves it, let alone the city’s uniformed public servants. That is why the conduct we witnessed in the park was a crime, even if the most appropriate charge is a comparably minor one. The histrionics of the police union haven’t been helpful because they are as much a caricature as people laughing the incident off as harmless — what happened was not on the level of a bona fide assault on an officer, the kind that occurs when they fight it out with a robbery suspect, or get in the middle of drunks throwing punches. But the union was right in criticizing the mayor for denying that what took place hurt police officers, was against the law, and demanded action.

If something like this happens again, I invite the mayor to turn to the wisdom I learned growing up in 20th-century Brooklyn. If you wanted to rope a stranger into a snowball fight, you could toss one snowball at them, aiming for the legs. If they didn’t join in, you smiled and let them pass. You definitely didn’t surround them and unload snowballs on their head as they walked away. In the era I am from in Bensonhurst, that person and his friends would soon be back. With baseball bats. I am not recommending that type of retaliation, but I understand what motivates it.

As Snowballgate grinds on longer than most people want it to, it seems to be settling in the right place. The police have released images of the most egregious attackers, and one, after being arrested on assault charges, has been arraigned on a misdemeanor. If the NYPD’s track record of apprehending people who’ve assailed its officers is any indication, other arrests will follow. The mayor, as of late Friday afternoon, has been silent on the NYPD’s decision to pursue suspects and level charges. People will be watching closely to see how he handles the next incident where the city’s police are subject to a humiliating indignity, especially one that rises to the level of a crime. And for the rest of us, the lesson is as simple and pure as the driven snow: Don’t throw anything at the police.