What arrest?
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s criminal record from his civil disobedience arrest last summer was officially sealed this week.
De Blasio was among more than a dozen demonstrators handcuffed and hauled away in a police van July 10 outside the Midtown offices of the State University of New York chancellor to protest SUNY’s proposed closure of Long Island College Hospital, known as LICH, in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
Charged with two counts of disorderly conduct for blocking the building entrance and refusing a cop’s order to move, the future mayor accepted an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, or ACOD, in August. ACOD is legal lingo for, stay out of trouble for six months the record gets sealed forever.
The mayor didn’t break the law again, and on Tuesday, The People of the State of New York vs. Bill de Blasio disappeared from the Criminal Court docket.
On Thursday de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a deal to guarantee some kind of healthcare facility on the LICH site, albeit likely a scaled down one.
In the court paperwork we retrieved before the case went away, Police Officer Miguel Cruz describes how de Blasio and 14 others “standing closely together…directly in front of the entrance… caused pedestrians to be obstructed from walking into the building.”
“Many of the individuals were chanting, wearing matching stickers or holding signs,” Cruz writes.
Cruz said that De Blasio and the other protesters disobeyed SUNY Police Officer Akeema Wilson’s two warnings to move or face arrest.
Now it’s as if the arrest never happened — in the eyes of the law, at least.
