HOW SHOULD COPS REACT TO SNOWBALLS? 4 NOW SOUGHT BY NYPD FOR ‘ASSAULT’ AFTER MONDAY BLIZZARD MADNESS
WHAT CAN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION TELL US ABOUT MONDAY’S SNOWBALL ‘ASSAULT’ ON THE NYPD IN WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK? THE ONLY WAY TO WIN A SNOWBALL FIGHT IS TO JOIN IT
MALONE, NEW YORK Feb. 25, 2026 OPINION
The American Revolution started with a snowball thrown at a British soldier, but somehow the NYPD hasn't learned the only way to win a snowball fight is to join it—or avoid it.
You must be living in Antarctica if you haven't heard about Monday afternoon's post-blizzard "snowball incident" in New York City. It involved the NYPD and a group of young men and a few women—one dressed as a hotdog with mustard—in Washington Square Park.
I have to write "snowball incident" because as fun as snowball fights are supposed to be, some people are taking this one very seriously.
So seriously they can't even agree on what, exactly, to call it.
The City's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said it looked to him like "a snowball fight that got out of hand."
But Patrick Hendry, President of the NYPD's union, called it "a vicious attack on New York City police officers."
Jessica Tisch, Mayor Mamdani's newly-appointed NYPD Commissioner, didn't want to dwell on the details.
"Don’t mess with my cops," Tisch told the New York Post after she visited City Hall Wednesday morning. "I am a protective Jewish mother."
These are characterizations and reactions. The facts are these.
The NYPD put out a wanted poster for two teens Tuesday afternoon:
Wanted for ASSAULT ON A POLICE OFFICER: On 2/23/26 at approximately 4:20 PM, two uniformed police officers were inside Washington Square Park when two individuals intentionally struck the officers multiple times with snow and ice causing injury to their head, neck, and face.
On Wednesday night, the NYPD told The Free Lance News it was searching for two additional people, bringing the total to four.
You'd think a police force that calls itself the "finest" would know the only way to win a snowball fight is to join the snowball fight. Even the cops in North Bergen, New Jersey and as far away as Duvall, Washington know that.
But no. NYPD officers—and right-leaning commentators-continue to equate snowballs with molotov cocktails, and conflate snowball fights with armed rebellion.
In a way, you can't blame them. As our Nation nears its 250th birthday, it's worth remembering America started with a snowball fight.
Patriot John Adams called the Boston Massacre—when British troops killed five colonists—the "foundation" of the Revolution. The Boston Massacre started with snowballs thrown at British Private Hugh White, standing guard outside the Custom House in Boston around 8:00 PM on Mar. 5, 1770.
Instead of taking lessons like these to heart, cops keep bringing their guns to snowball fights. For example.
In December 2009, a couple hundred Washington, DC residents used social media to organize what they called the "DC Snowpocalypse Guerrilla Snowball Fight" at a downtown intersection. Detective Michael Baylor happened to drive through—in a red Hummer.
I don't know about you, but if I'm at something called the "DC Snowpocalypse Guerrilla Snowball Fight" and a sweet red Hummer enters the kill zone, that motherfucker is toast.
Video captured what happened after participants lit up Det. Baylor's red Hummer with a barrage of snow. He stopped, got out in civilian clothes and pulled his gun. The crowd stood its ground and chanted "DON'T BRING A GUN TO A SNOWBALL FIGHT!"
They were right.
Although the local precinct commander initially said he was cool with it, Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier later called Det. Baylor's actions "totally inappropriate!" The three-decade veteran rode a desk until he was suspended for 10 days for violating the department's use of force policy.
A year later in New York, a blizzard blanketed the City in snow on Feb. 26, 2010. It was a school day, but schools were cancelled. Anthony Aquino, Manuel Rondon, Johnathan Rodriguez, Christian Perez and Ariel Lopez, then all teenagers, were having a snowball fight outside a Bronx apartment building.
That's when off-duty NYPD Sgt. Adonis Ramirez left the building and stepped into the line of fire.
Sgt. Ramirez pulled his gun, ordered them to kneel on the ground, video showed, and had them arrested for attempted assault and possession of weapons.
"The weapon being nothing more than a snowball," Neil Wollerstein, the boys' lawyer, told the New York Daily News.
At first, Sgt. Ramirez claimed he was hit with several snowballs, but later he had to admit he was only hit by one.
The charges against the boys were dropped. The boys sued the City and Ramirez and, in 2014, they settled for $60k—each.
Yet, here we are again.
To begin with, this version of the NYPD is not the old version. That deserves to be recognized.
I lived in New York City, worked its streets as a journalist and interacted with the NYPD since the 1970s. Just look at these new cops in Bruce Schaff's video from Monday’s snowball fight. There's a black guy, a couple white guys, some spanish guys, maybe an arab guy, asian guys, women, the cops in this video are a veritable Rainbow Coalition of Cops. That’s a good thing. Its what progress looks like.
Still, their first mistake was failing to plan. Which isn’t really their fault, it was their bosses.
The NYPD keeps getting caught by surprise by events organized out in the open on social media. Like when gamer Kai Cenat showed up in Union Square with a few thousand people. Wikipedia calls what happened the 2023 Union Square Riot.
The second mistake they made—and this is their’s all by themselves—was even going into the park. What did they think was going to happen?
The third mistake they made, video shows, was pushing a couple of people around.
Now, it's totally within the bounds of fair play, since we're just playing around, to push someone down into a snowbank if they mashed you in the head with a chuck of snow. Especially if you're a cop and not going to arrest them—as these officers obviously and, in my view, rightly did not intend to do.
But by throwing people around, you're escalating, even if you're playing fair. And you're escalating in a crowd of kids—who are especially feral and Lord of the Rings-level savage in mobs.
Everyone's lucky it didn't end worse than it did.
The lesson of this—the 2026 Washington Square Park Snowball Riot, or whatever the Internet ends up calling it—is that cops need to train on this. Especially cops in cities that get snow. They need to be taught, "Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight."
Someone in the NYPD once knew this—as this Community Affairs video from 2018 shows.
Why doesn't Commissioner Tisch's NYPD know it—in 2026?
Send tips or corrections to jasonbnicholas@gmail.com or, if you prefer, thefreelancenews@proton.me