Outrage continued to grow Wednesday as the police arrested three men who were seen on video hurling water over the weekend in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The officers had been sent to disperse disorderly groups at fire hydrants during a three-day heat wave and in both incidents left without arresting the assailants, who were egged on by bystanders.
The police were still seeking at least one other man involved in one of the incidents, in Harlem, where an officer was struck in the head as he was handcuffing a man with an open arrest warrant on the back of a car.
Police officers are often accused of using too much force, as the proliferation of cellphone cameras makes it easy for people to record and share events online. But the recent videos prompted a rare rebuke from the Police Department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, who said the officers had put up with too much.
“Any cop who thinks that’s all right, that they can walk away from something like that, maybe should reconsider whether or not this is the profession for them,” said Terence Monahan, the chief of department. “We don’t take that.”
His comments followed a Police Department memo reminding officers that while courts give civilians wide leeway to heap verbal abuse on officers, physical acts like dousing or spraying water could result in a variety of charges: obstructing governmental administration, criminal tampering, harassment and disorderly conduct. If an officer’s equipment is damaged, it is also possible to file a charge of criminal mischief, the memo said.
Police officials said one of the men arrested Wednesday, Courtney Thompson, 28, of Brooklyn, was seen on video dumping water on an officer’s head in the borough’s Brownsville neighborhood Saturday. Two other men, Isaiah Scott, 23, and Chad Bowen, 28, were charged after they were recorded hurling water at officers making an arrest Sunday in Harlem, the police said. All were in custody and could not be reached for comment.
Thompson was charged with obstructing government administration, disorderly conduct and harassment; Scott, of Roebling, New Jersey, was charged with criminal mischief for throwing water at a woman and damaging her phone; Bowen, of Harlem, was also charged with criminal mischief.
All three men had prior arrests, and Thompson, who the police said is a member of the “Brownsville Fresh Gangstas,” a Crips subset, is on probation for a 2015 robbery. His lengthy rap sheet included an arrest in March on charges he assaulted a police officer during a traffic stop.
Before the arrests, the police commissioner, James O’Neill, said the city and the Police Department would “never tolerate such disrespect.”
Donovan Richards, the chairman of the City Council committee that oversees the Police Department, said Monahan’s remarks were troubling because they criticized the officers for doing what the department preaches: exercising restraint. He said that while the men’s actions were “reprehensible,” the officers deserved to be commended for avoiding a needless confrontation that could have spiraled out of control.
“These officers shouldn’t publicly be ridiculed,” he said. “They did the right thing. They defused a situation that could have been worse.”
The videos were widely circulated and hotly debated after they were posted on Instagram. On Twitter, Vice President Mike Pence joined a chorus of public officials who condemned what he called “disgraceful” attacks.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, traded barbs with his Republican predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, over which mayor’s policies were to blame.
Giuliani, who as mayor initiated an era of aggressive enforcement for minor offenses, suggested that de Blasio’s decision to reverse that policy was to blame for the disrespect shown to the police. De Blasio shot back that crime rates were low “because we're bridging the divide between police and communities.”
Conservative politicians and two of the city’s largest police unions seized on the videos as evidence of the perils of recent efforts to roll back enforcement that targets low-level crime. The Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams, a former police officer, and 26 other prominent black New Yorkers signed an open letter published Wednesday condemning the attacks and calling on neighbors to respect the Police Department “when its officers are lawfully doing exactly what we have asked them to do.”
Patrick Lynch, the president of the city’s largest police union, said criminals have been emboldened by some district attorneys’ refusal to prosecute low-level crimes like fare evasion and marijuana possession, as well as recently enacted state and local laws requiring officers to issue tickets for certain offenses instead of making arrests.
“The chaos will continue to escalate unless something changes,” he said in a statement.
But proponents of curbing enforcement of petty offenses say aggressive tactics are unnecessary in an era of historically low crime — and only feed resentment of the police.
Richards, the City Council member, said Lynch’s portrayal of the incidents was a reflection of the lack of diversity in police union leadership. He said the Police Department’s efforts to build trust in neighborhoods alienated by decades of aggressive policing were helping to ease tension. Hostility remains, Richards said, because the Police Department and the union fail to respond vigorously when officers abuse civilians.
“The climate is where it’s at because there is no accountability,” he said.
One former police official said Monahan’s comments ignored the fear among officers of becoming the next Daniel Pantaleo, an officer whose name became synonymous with excessive force after cellphone video captured his attempt to arrest Eric Garner for illegally selling untaxed cigarettes on Staten Island in 2014. The 43-year-old man died, and his final words — “I can’t breathe” — became a rallying cry in the Black Lives Matter movement.
“It’s a Catch-22,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect his job. “You have to recognize the difficulty of these jobs, and you can’t be a pendulum saying, ‘Take action. Show restraint.’ ”
Opening fire hydrants is a summer cooling ritual in many of New York’s poor and predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods. But it’s also a crime without a business permit or a spray cap installed by the Fire Department. Offenders can be punished by a fine of up to $1,000 and 30 days in jail.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.