Editorial | No more non-answers from Mamdani after snowball snafu

A snowball fight in Washington Square Park shouldn’t reach the level of a scandal involving the mayor, but here we are.

Let’s state the obvious: Some idiots attending a well-intentioned snowball fight in Washington Square Park on Monday after the weekend’s blizzard got out of hand and decided to pelt police officers responding to the scene with their icy ammo.

Some of the officers who were hit with snowballs suffered lacerations. That, combined with the viral videos of the incident, is enough evidence of an assault to warrant a criminal investigation — something which Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and the heads of several police unions agreed should happen while condemning the assault.

But when reporters asked Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday about the snowball incident and whether such an investigation was warranted, he gave a very milquetoast response.

“I’ve seen videos of the kids throwing snowballs at members of the NYPD in Washington Square Park,” Mamdani said. “I want to say, our officers have been on the front lines of helping our city respond to this blizzard. … They and our entire city workforce deserve to be treated with respect.”

In fact, his response to this question was nearly identical to a statement he tweeted about the incident a short time before Tuesday’s press conference.

When pressed about whether a criminal investigation should ensue, as Tisch urged, and if those who hurled snowballs that injured officers should be prosecuted, as the police unions demanded, Mamdani gave non-answers, insisting that, in his view, “It looks like a snowball fight.”

The mayor didn’t explicitly rebuff his police commissioner or the police unions with his all-too-carefully worded responses. But one does not need a degree in mind-reading to see through them and recognize this public rebuke.

At the press conference, a reporter asked Mamdani whether he believed there was an overreaction to the snowball incident—and the mayor again declined to provide a direct answer.

The mayor’s cautious response to this incident was unnecessary and inane. No one would have disagreed with a public call for an investigation, given that officers had been injured in the affair. At the very least, it would have been a show of support from the mayor to the NYPD rank-and-file that any assault, large or small, is intolerable and unacceptable.

Instead, Mamdani’s choice of words invites further public scrutiny that could, well, snowball into a bigger public relations problem for the mayor. It also minimizes the assault of two officers in the eyes of many.

The people of New York did not elect this mayor to give non-answers, regurgitate rehearsed lines, or to throw the NYPD under the bus. Mamdani must heed the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt and “speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly” — regardless of the situation, in matters large and small, and always in doing what’s right.