Five teenagers who were allegedly assaulting several cops in Times Square on Friday night were apprehended in part due to the NYPD’s controversial gang database, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Tuesday.
As first reported by amNewYork, several police officers from the Midtown South Precinct were ambushed at around 7:30 p.m. on May 3 along 42 Street and 8th Avenue. Police report that the officers were responding to the report of a robbery one block from the popular boxing bout between Rolando Romero and Ryan Garcia when they were attacked by a gang of about 12 youths, and had metal objects, scooters, water bottles, umbrellas, and even a basketball thrown at them.
Over the weekend, Mayor Eric Adams exclusively told amNewYork that three of the perpetrators were cuffed about 24 hours after, all of whom were teenagers. Still others remain at large.
“I can assure you that everyone who is responsible will be brought to justice,” Hizzoner said Tuesday. “We’re not going to allow people to attack the symbol of our public safety, and those are the men and women who wear the uniform.”
Tisch said Tuesday that three more arrests have been made, and all connected to the assault have been linked those involved to a migrant gang dubbed Los Diablos, a subset of Tren de Aragua — the infamous Venezuelan gang which President Trump has pointed to as the impetus for his mass deportation effort early on in his second term.
Police were able to connect the dots between the assault suspects and their alleged gang affiliation, Tisch said, because the names of the suspects were found in the NYPD’s gang database.
“Several of them are listed in our gang database, and that’s one of the reasons that we caught many of them so quickly. This database is one of the most critical tools that we have to protect our cops and to protect our communities. It helped us identify who they were, who they ran with, and what they were tied to,” Tisch said. “You can’t fight organized violence with blindfolds on.”
The revelation came days after a litany of legal groups announced that they would sue the NYPD over its use of the database, claiming that Black and Brown individuals make up 99% of the index and were unfairly targeted based on their race. The City Council has also moved to outlaw the database via legislation.
“The NYPD has used its Gang Database to systematically target, surveil, and criminalize Black and Latino New Yorkers in violation of their constitutional rights,” Kevin Jason, Deputy Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Legal Defense Fund said on April 30.
According to law enforcement sources, the cops involved in the wild clash suffered minor injuries while those arrested ranged in age from between 12 and 19 years of age. Tisch added that some of those arrested also have extensive records despite their young ages.
Police reported that they are still on the hunt for at least three others, believing those who remain on the lam are between 15 and 20 years old.
As reported by amNewYork in 2024, NYPD Chief Jason Savino said that various subsets of Tren de Aragua had taken root in iconic parts of the city, including “Los Diablos de la 42,” of Times Square, which translates in English as “Little Devils of 42nd Street.”
Savino says that 37 identified members of Los Diablos have themselves racked up more than 240 arrests.
