We really wish Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg hadn’t joined Mayor Zohran Mamdani in failing to support police officers who got assaulted in the course of doing their duty.
Bragg’s office dropped the most serious charges against the first perp arrested for throwing frozen snowballs at cops answering a 911 call about chaos in Washington Square Park.
Prosecutors claimed they’d have trouble proving that Gusmane Coulibaly, 27, was responsible for the injuries that have a cop out on sick leave mending from injuries near his eye caused by the snowball attacks, but they certainly could’ve tried.
The effort would at least have signaled that the DA’s Office has the back of the officers it’s supposed to work with; instead, this was one more sign that Bragg’s sympathies are with the criminals.
“It was meant to be fun,’’ the perp claims, pretending ignorance of the perils of throwing anything at people who carry guns — or was the “fun” in knowing the cops didn’t dare fight back?
He sure doesn’t seem worried now that the charges are trivial; too bad — throwing the book at him might’ve encouraged cooperation in finding the other perps who remain at large.
Coulibaly’s certainly not the harmless “kid” that Mamdani keeps calling the snowballers: He’s already due in court on March 15 for an alleged straphanger shakedown that he claims was just a stunt intended to boost his hopes of becoming a YouTube influencer.
“When you wear this uniform and uphold those standards, you deserve to be treated with respect,’’ NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told a group of cops at a promotion ceremony on Friday.
Amen; too bad the mayor and Manhattan DA are singing from a different hymnal.
Mamdani still refuses to support his police commissioner’s warning that the rowdy snow-throwing assaults were “criminal”; does he want her to stay on the job?
No, the icy affair wasn’t that big a deal in and of itself — but the mayor shrugging it off as a “playful snowball fight” ignores the fact that the cops couldn’t fight, indeed might’ve faced disciplinary charges if they’d responded, not to mention how it might have escalated from there.
So now the mayor, with Bragg behind him, has licensed further acts of disrespect, harassment and aggression toward cops — by actual kids and by full adults like Coulibaly.
What will they say if the next incident ends with more serious injuries to police officers, or to civilians?
It’s perfectly fair for the critics to slam Mamdani and Bragg as an “axis of anarchy”: They’re doing the reverse of standing up for law and order.
Apparently, they’re determined to see how much erosion of public order the city can survive.
