An ICE agent appeared to tase a man several times while another agent tried to forcefully drag him out of his car as the man screams in pain and begs for help, as captured in a video obtained by THE CITY.

ICE agents later took that man to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center for medical treatment, in what became a tense, hours-long standoff Saturday night into the early hours of Sunday morning, with protesters and NYPD officers outside the hospital.

In a statement sent hours after THE CITY first published this story, an unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security disputed that the man had been tased. “This criminal was NOT tased by law enforcement,” he wrote.  

The video, captured by bystanders, shows a masked agent appearing to fire a taser at the man, who is seated in the driver’s seat of a white car with the door open. The man screams in pain as popping sounds are heard, while repeatedly asking to talk to a lawyer and pleading for help from nearby witnesses. 

At one point the agent appears to use a knife to cut the man’s seatbelt. 

“Somebody help me,” the man can be heard screaming. “They are killing me.”

A subsequent video shows the man lying on the ground continuing to scream as agents handcuff him.

On Sunday, an unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security had identified the man arrested that night as a Nigerian national named Chidozie Wilson Okeke, who they said had prior arrests for assault and criminal drug possession and had overstayed a tourist visa. 

The spokesperson said Okeke “became physically combative attempting to punch and elbow ICE officers” and had “refused to comply with officers’ lawful commands to exit the vehicle and weaponized his vehicle to attempt to hit ICE officers.”

“Our officers followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to make the arrest,” the spokesperson, who declined to be named, said.

Ivan Carrion, a 35-year-old who lives on the block, said he heard a car window smash from his apartment above in the late afternoon Saturday and rushed to the window to see what was going on.

“They were choking him, hitting him, trying to get him out of the car,” and the agents had bashed his car window, Carrion said. 

The struggle went on for  minutes, he recalled, while the man screamed in pain. Eventually the agents handcuffed the man and drove him away in another vehicle, as one of the agents jumped into the man’s car and drove it away.

“I just didn’t know they were able to forcefully force themselves into somebody’s car and pull him out like that,” he told THE CITY on Monday. “I never seen that before.”

Two days after the arrest, crumbled glass from the car window still lay strewn on the roadway. 

An NYPD spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment on Okeke’s arrest history right away.

Okeke’s arrest precipitated a chaotic standoff outside Wyckoff Heights Medical Center when activists got word of ICE’s presence at the hospital and rushed to the scene.

As the demonstrators arrived, federal agents pepper-sprayed several of them, eyewitnesses told THE CITY. While agents were inside with Okeke, who was being treated in the emergency room, the crowd of protesters grew, staying outside the hospital until early morning Sunday.

“There is an ICE agent detaining your neighbors inside,” one demonstrator chanted to the crowd. “Your neighbor is currently being abducted.”

At one point, an agent left the hospital in a sedan — speeding through a crowd of demonstrators trying to block the car. Later, at around 2 a.m., video from FreedomNewsTV showed the ICE agents dragging Okeke out of the hospital in handcuffs and thrusting him into a car, while NYPD officers cleared the way from the raucous crowd. 

An unnamed NYPD spokesperson said they’d arrested nine people over the course of the evening, charging eight with resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration while giving a ninth person a summons. 

Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who was outside the hospital until early Sunday morning said she witnessed what “appeared to be direct coordination between ICE and the NYPD, with officers cordoning off the ambulance bay to allow ICE to move the individual into their vehicles and leave.”

A spokesperson for the NYPD said they did not participate in the earlier ICE operation.

Asked about the situation at a press conference Monday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said “NYPD officers were not dispatched to the hospital to participate or facilitate an ICE operation. Rather, they were responding to 911 calls regarding a protest outside of the hospital.”

“And as I’ve made very clear that our laws leave nothing, no room for interpretation about the fact that our NYPD will not participate in civil immigration enforcement,” Mamdani said, calling ICE raids cruel and inhumane.

Murad Awawdeh, the President and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, denounced the violent arrest and called for an investigation into how the NYPD handled the situation. 

“ICE has put New Yorkers in the hospital through their violent and unlawful tactics – and DHS constantly lies to the American public to justify terrorizing, brutalizing, and even killing people,” he said. 

“This weekend, when a New Yorker was put in the hospital by ICE – while he repeatedly asked to speak to his lawyer – they once again showed their disregard for the law and their disrespect for immigrant New Yorkers’ lives.”

Katie Honan contributed additional reporting.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article said that ICE agents had tased Okeke. ICE has since denied he was tased.

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At a recent press conference announcing a sweeping takedown of rival gangs notorious for their wild shootouts across public housing in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch made a point of praising the NYPD’s controversial gang database.

“Yes we certainly did use the criminal group database as part of this investigation,” Tisch said, using the department’s more ambiguous name for the gang list. Asserting that 60% of all shootings in the city have some nexus to gangs or crews, she said the database “remains a valuable tool in our efforts to keep New Yorkers safe.”

The police commissioner’s enthusiastic support stands in contrast to her boss’s feelings: as a candidate, Mayor Zohran Mamdani repeatedly called for terminating the database entirely, embracing the contention promoted by some criminal justice reform advocates that it targets Black and Hispanic teens and young men.

The mayor recently backed off from his call to pull the plug and now insists the database must be reformed.

While a blueprint for fixing the gang database has been around for years, an analysis by THE CITY found that the NYPD stiff-armed or slow-walked nearly a dozen reforms recommended by the city’s ethics watchdog to address allegations of racial bias.

The database is perhaps the most high profile of several areas where Mamdani and Tisch have dramatically different perspectives. In the past he’s vowed to end a crackdown on lower level quality of life crimes and to eliminate a unit known as the Strategic Response Group that’s been criticized for heavy-handed tactics during protests. Tisch supports both.

In two reports since 2023, the city Department of Investigation suggested 30 reforms aimed at ensuring that people aren’t placed in the gang database without sufficient reason and aren’t kept there when there’s no evidence of continuing gang affiliation.

First DOI recommended that cops provide a clearer explanation of the evidence they use to justify placing someone in the database, a process known as “activation.” And they suggested creating a system to continually review the police justifications and a process for individuals or their parents to appeal inclusion.

While the NYPD adopted some of DOI’s recommendations, with the implementation of several still pending, the department under then-Commissioner Keechant Sewell rejected five outright, including the appeals protocol and changes to how often justifications are reviewed and who gets to review them.

NYPD spokesperson Erika Tannor said the department “continues to work on this and has made very meaningful progress, which DOI itself has unequivocally acknowledged.”

Meanwhile, Tisch has consistently championed the database, calling it a critical weapon to reduce gun crime.

“When we have a shooting in the city, we use the gang database to anticipate where we may see retaliatory violence, and that has helped drive our gun violence down,” she said at a Jan. 6 press conference with Mamdani standing next to her.

A key aspect of that effort is tracking the conversations taking place on social media that document gang beatings and sometimes describe in specific detail a gang’s plan to seek revenge when a member is beaten or shot by a rival.

That was the case with the takedown of two Brownsville gangs Tisch and Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez announced April 15, when they unsealed indictments against 36 defendants ranging in age from 16 to 27 alleging felonies from murder to weapons possession.

The Brownsville investigation targeted a gang called WOOO and another called CHOO who for the last three years, prosecutors say, have engaged in a chaotic shooting war around several New York City Housing Authority developments. The grim score to date is 11 victims — including one homicide.

These battles created chaos. 

The DA played security video showing a 69-year-old man taking out his trash who was wounded when gunfire erupted. Another video showed children ducking and running as gang members opened fire across a playground. A cell phone video posted on social media depicted gang members beating up a rival in a plaza near Metrotech Center in downtown Brooklyn.

“This is life,” the poster is heard saying as the video captures his rival beaten and prostrate on the sidewalk.

Tisch noted that, “Of the 36 defendants, every single one of them was entered into that database.”

How It Works

The database consists of people — nearly all of them Black or Hispanic teenagers or young men — identified by law enforcement as gang members. The criteria to justify “activation” includes a subject “self-admitting” gang membership on social media or openly to police. Or, during an investigation, the individual is identified by two independent and reliable sources as a gang member. 

Until recently the department also factored in if the subject frequented “known gang locations,” flashed alleged gang hand signs or displayed gang-affiliated tattoos on social media.

David Sarni, a retired NYPD detective who is now an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, described the database as a “tool that can help define motivations and relationships.”

The NYPD says monitoring social media chatter is particularly useful in identifying possible planned retaliation and ratcheting up police oversight of gang members making specific threats. 

As Michael Gerber, the deputy commissioner for legal matters, put it during a City Council hearing last year, “If we know from the database that a shooting victim is a gang member, the identities of rival gang members, and where those gangs are based, we can immediately deploy officers in a way that will help prevent retaliatory shootings.”

Sarni noted “activation” required at least two independent sources, and said the activation was supposed to be reviewed regularly to ensure there is evidence of ongoing gang affiliation. Individuals can then either be “renewed” or “deactivated” — that is, taken off the list.

For several years, cops could also see the names of people who had been “de-activated” but, Sarni said, “They stopped that. We don’t keep a person in the system for 50 years.” That modification was in response to DOI’s critiques.

Commissioner Tisch has asserted that information about gang affiliation stored in the database is not used to determine whether there is probable cause to arrest a person. It mainly helps detectives “determine who is involved and where retaliation is most likely to occur,” she has said.

While campaigning last year Mamdani had a very different view, labeling it a “vast dragnet of New Yorkers on the basis of whether they go out late, the photos they put on social media, so much of the facts of life of being a young New Yorker.”

Tattoos and Parades

Last spring the Legal Aid Society and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed suit in Brooklyn federal court calling the database racist and alleging it violates free speech, due process and equal protection sections of the Bill of Rights. In December a judge denied the city’s motion to toss the suit but also rejected the plaintiff’s move to declare it a class action on behalf of anyone placed in the database, limiting it to three men named as lead plaintiffs.

The suit alleges that 99% of those placed on the list are Black or Hispanic. And it says that mere placement in the database can be used as justification to stop and question people. 

Reviewing internal documents that detectives must fill out when proposing an individual for inclusion, Legal Aid said that cops have cited everything from “Mexican tattoos” to what they described as “cultural touchstones such as common gestures used by Black athletes” or “being present at the Puerto Rican Day parade.”

In the past, the list has included children as young as 11, the lawsuit says.

“It’s basically youth behaviour,” said Legal Aid staff attorney Rigodis Appling. “Youth culture is youth culture. If this were a white suburb doing these things, they would not be put on a gang database.” Juveniles make up 2.7% of the current database.

The Legal Aid Society, whose union urged Mamdani not to reappoint Tisch, says the database can’t be fixed  and that reforms the NYPD has claimed to have adopted are incremental and meaningless.

The Department of Investigation’s April 2023 and October 2025 reports on the database make clear the NYPD has moved slowly to adopt proposed fixes, rejecting some recommendations outright. 

The 2023 report submitted by NYPD Inspector General Jeanene Barrett to then-Police Commissioner Sewell examined what evidence the NYPD used to justify placing 493 people on the list and found the nature and documentation of individuals “self-admitting” to gang membership “varied widely.”

DOI noted that some social media postings cited to justify “activation” were “cursory, conclusory and failed to include sufficient detail to support” self-admission to a gang. Examples included cops relying on “certain emojis,” or “photos of individuals in the company of known gang members without more detail.” Some cops noted “social media content” with zero information on the nature of the content.

In 136 cases, cops “activated” individuals based on what they described as “two sources” but did not always “document the existence of two independent sources.” The report found cops in some cases simply designated entire Housing Authority developments as a “gang location.”

The NYPD under Commissioner Sewell agreed in principle to accept 11 recommendations, but rejected five outright, including drafting a written policy requiring all “activated” entries be reviewed every 12 months for teens under 18 and every 18 months for adults. The department said a review every two years for teens and every three years for adults was sufficient.

The NYPD also rejected DOI’s suggestion to create a panel to review all activations, and shot down a suggestion to create an appeals process for parents if their teens have no law enforcement contact for a year, contending it could compromise investigations and endanger informants.

The department at first rejected DOI’s request to let individuals file a public records request to see if they’re on the list, but relented after the Legal Aid Society threatened legal action.

In a second review in October, Investigations Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber found the NYPD had “made substantial improvements” but had not fully adopted five recommendations.

DOI noted, for example, that while the NYPD had initiated review of “activation,” there was still no supervisory oversight of renewals and deactivations. Last week the NYPD told THE CITY it is working on fixing this. 

While DOI recommended cops provide a detailed narrative explaining the justification for putting someone in the database, DOI found police continued to use “boilerplate language” to describe the source’s “reasonable belief” that the subject was a gang member. 

Now, NYPD spokesperson Tannor said, “Department policy has been updated to require that an individual’s reasonable belief must be supported by substantive explanations that the individual is a member of a criminal group.” 

“We have previously acknowledged that our process for making juvenile notifications was deficient,” Tannor said. “We are working to fix that.”

DOI also noted that sealed arrests aren’t supposed to be used to justify placement in the database, but found NYPD was still listing the top charge of sealed arrests in complaints to justify “activation.” This policy “is being updated,” the department said.

In its October report, DOI made 13 new recommendations, and in January NYPD agreed to accept all “in principle.” The NYPD said they should be in place by July. 

In February, nearly three years after DOI’s first report, the NYPD issued the biggest change to its gang database, embracing new protocols that eliminated many of the criteria cops had been using to justify “activation.” 

The department says it no longer uses categories such as “frequent presence at a known criminal group location” or “association with known criminal group members.” Scars and tattoos “associated with a particular criminal group” are no longer enough, nor is “frequent wearing of the colors” and “frequent use of hand signs associated with particular criminal groups.”

And they note that the number of people in the database has dropped from 18,000 in 2019 to its current 7,700 — a 58% drop. The number of juveniles fell from 440 to 209.

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani vetoed a controversial bill approved by the City Council last month instructing the police department to establish anti-protest “buffer zones” around schools and educational institutions.

A related bill calling for security perimeters around houses of worship passed by a veto-proof majority.

In a statement Friday, the mayor said he had reviewed both bills but found the one for education institutions “meaningfully different.” 

“The problem is how widely this bill defines an educational institution and the constitutional concerns it raises regarding New Yorkers’ fundamental right to protest,” he said in the statement. “As the bill is written, everywhere from universities to museums to teaching hospitals could face restrictions.”

Mamdani’s statement echoed the concerns of labor groups and other allies who said many buildings could technically be considered an educational facility, further limiting protests.

Speaker Julie Menin, a moderate Democrat, pushed for both bills, saying they were needed to combat rising antisemitism. She and her allies have said the so-called “buffer zone” proposals are meant to provide greater accountability in the NYPD’s protest protocols, and won’t infringe on free speech rights.

In a statement Friday, Menin said the purpose of the bill was safety.

“Ensuring students can enter and exit their schools without fear of harassment or intimidation should not be controversial,” she said. “This bill simply requires the NYPD to clearly outline how it will ensure safe access when there are threats of obstruction or physical injury, while fully protecting First Amendment rights.”

The veto is the latest confrontation between Mamdani and the Council, with the most recent being over the city’s contentious budget negotiations. 

The Council can attempt to override Mamdani’s veto in a new vote, or let it stand.

United Auto Workers Region 9A, which fiercely opposed the bill, sent a message to its members Friday morning taking credit for the veto and said it would begin whipping Council members to make sure any re-vote fails. The union represents thousands of educators and researchers at Columbia University and New York University.

Menin, the memo read, “is potentially going to attempt to override the veto by flipping multiple council votes.”

“We will begin a whipping strategy with Council members in the next week but for now, the most important thing is an overwhelming display of public support for this veto.”

The religious sites bill passed 44 to 5, a veto-proof majority, but the schools buffer-zone bill passed by a 30 to 19 margin.

Despite the overwhelming Council majority that supported the bill affecting places of worship, Mamdani, speaking in a social media video, portrayed his decision not to veto it as a matter of principle, adding that he nevertheless disagreed with “its framing of all protests as a security concern.”

In recent weeks, labor and community groups closely aligned with Mamdani have urged him to veto the bill, known as Intro 175, saying that it threatens free speech and worker rights. Legal groups including the New York Civil Liberties Union also strongly opposed the measure. 

Menin’s bills came as an answer to the widely-criticized police response to protesters who picketed the Park East Synagogue, which had rented space to an organization that helps Jews move to Israel and to settlements on the occupied West Bank, as well as the 2024 pro-Palestine encampments on college campuses.

A consortium of prominent Jewish organizations including the UJA-Federation of New York rebuked Mamdani on Friday, calling the planned veto “a profound failure of City Hall to demonstrate to all New Yorkers that our safety is a priority.”

On April 17, a representative of Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su met with leaders of more than a dozen unions and the New York City Central Labor Council who pushed for a veto.

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City Hall officials met last week with union and labor leaders who are pushing Mayor Zohran Mamdani to veto a controversial City Council bill that would establish anti-protest “buffer zones” around schools and educational facilities.

A representative of Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su met via video call with leaders of more than a half a dozen unions and the New York City Central Labor Council, according to multiple sources who were at the meeting or briefed on the talks. 

Su’s representative gave no indication whether Mamdani would issue a veto, according to multiple sources. Last month the Council approved two bills creating protest “buffer zones,” one affecting houses of worship and the other targeting schools and “educational facilities.” 

“Mayor Mamdani is aware of the concerns raised regarding the potential for 175-B to limit the constitutional and labor rights of New Yorkers,” City Hall press secretary Joe Calvello said in a statement on Thursday, referring to the bill’s formal designation. “The Mayor will weigh these concerns seriously as he makes a final decision on this legislation.” 

The meeting came amid a growing pressure campaign from labor and other allies of Mamdani to veto the bill. Last week, several labor and community groups sent a letter urging him to veto the bill, describing it as a “radical overreach” that limits free speech and endangers New Yorkers.

Mamdani Faces Saturday Deadline

The two so-called “buffer zone” bills passed March 26 with the goal of targeting hate crimes across the city, with one bill related to religious sites and the other for schools and education facilities. The bills require the police department to create security perimeters during protests – instructing the NYPD to establish how far away the buffer zones would place demonstrators. 

Two unions that represent large numbers of college and university teaching staff — United Auto Workers Region 9A and Professional Staff Congress/CUNY — are leading the opposition to the bills, claiming that they would restrict their rights to strike or protest in their workplace.

The religious sites bill passed 44 to 5, a veto-proof majority, but the schools buffer-zone bill passed by a 30 to 19 margin — which the mayor could more likely successfully veto. 

Under the city charter, Mamdani has until Saturday to veto the bill or officially sign it into law. If he does neither, it automatically becomes law. 

A spokesperson, Dora Pekec, said Wednesday there was no update to what the mayor would do. 

Council Speaker Julie Menin, a moderate Democrat, pushed for the legislation as part of her efforts to combat antisemitism. She and her allies have maintained that the so-called “buffer zone” proposals are meant to provide greater accountability to the police department’s protest protocols, not to infringe on free speech rights.

Her proposals came as a response to the police’s widely-criticized response to protesters who picketed the Park East Synagogue, which had rented space to an organization that helps Jews move to Israel and to settlements on the occupied West Bank, as well as the 2024 pro-Palestine encampments on college campuses.

The New York Civil Liberties Union and other legal organizations say the bills are Constitutionally dubious.

Menin, speaking at the 92Y in Manhattan on Wednesday evening at an event on “the future of being Jewish in New York,” defended the bills and warned of a potential mayoral veto, City & State reported.

“I really hope that there is not a veto of that legislation, because I think that will lead to more divisiveness when we need less divisiveness,” Menin said.

Labor and community group leaders told THE CITY they were lobbying Council members who voted for the schools bill to change sides in a future vote to override a veto, sending nearly 11,000 emails to the mayor and Council members.

Representatives from multiple unions who met with Su’s team on April 17 expressed a variety of concerns about the bill, including the vagueness around what could be considered an “educational facility,” sources told THE CITY.

THE CITY reached out to several unions who attended the virtual meeting with the deputy mayor’s team. None agreed to comment on the meeting, citing the confidential nature of the conversations. The New York City Central Labor Council also declined to comment.

But some, in addition to the UAW and PSC-CUNY, have gone public with their opposition.

Representatives from healthcare unions, including the Committee of Interns and Residents-SEIU and 1199 SEIU, are among those calling on the mayor to veto the schools bill. They say many teaching hospitals where their members work could technically fall under the bill’s scope — meaning members would be barred from rallying outside in the case of a strike or other union action.

Teamsters Local 804, which represents UPS and Amazon truck drivers, has also called on a veto.

However there is no consensus among labor. 

Kevin Elkins, political director of the carpenters’ union, told THE CITY that his union does not oppose the buffer-zone bills. He said the bills allow the Mamdani administration the ability to implement the buffer zones as it sees fit, and that the union trusts the mayor’s commitment to protect worker and free speech rights.

“I think the mayor has demonstrated his commitment to labor several times over at this point, so I have full confidence in his administration’s ability to do that justly,” Elkins said.

Jewish and Catholic Leaders Voice Support

Religious organizations who favor buffer zones around schools also send their own letters to Mamdani.

“Schools are not just buildings, they are spaces where children should feel safe, supported, and ready to learn,” the letter said. “When access to those spaces is compromised, the impact is immediate and serious.”

The letter was signed by Jewish school leaders as well as the superintendents of schools within the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn, which covers nearly 150 schools across the five boroughs. 

Disclosure: Irizarry Aponte is a PSC-CUNY member in her role as an adjunct instructor at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY.

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An ongoing fight to keep a Brooklyn grandmother in her family home escalated on Wednesday morning when the police arrested Councilmember Chi Ossé as he protested the move.

Ossé (D-Brooklyn) was in front of the Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone with community supporters to prevent longtime resident Carmella Charrington from being evicted when officers from the New York Police Department pulled the Council member to the ground and cuffed him, face down, video shows.

New York City marshals were at the home to evict Charrington and to look for her father, who is under a conservatorship in the state of Georgia. Over two dozen protestors were also on the scene. The marshals called the NYPD for backup, as the protestors were blocking access to the house, and ended up making four arrests, including Ossé, according to an NYPD spokesperson. 

NYPD officers took Ossé to the local precinct, according to a statement from his office, and released him in the early afternoon. He was taken to a local hospital for evaluation shortly afterwards. Ossé and those arrested were charged with obstruction of governmental administration and disorderly conduct, NYPD said.

Charrington spoke with THE CITY Wednesday at the brownstone, just after she said she spent five days on Rikers Island, held in contempt for the conservatorship case involving her father and linked to the property.

“I swear I feel like I’m in ‘Get Out,’” she said, referring to the 2017 horror film. If she and her family lose the house, she said: “It’d be devastating. It’s four generations of irreparable harm.”

Charrington’s son, William McFadden, said his 6-year-old daughter was rattled by the police action taken Wednesday. McFadden, the daughter and his 7-month-old son were among the family members in the home when the police, marshals and members of the sheriff’s office arrived.

“No child should have to ask, ‘Daddy, why are they taking our house right now? Daddy, why are they changing the locks?’” McFadden said.

The family and their allies, including Ossé, are adamant the situation is deed theft. But officials and records point to a more complicated story.

Charrington’s home on a tree-lined block of Jefferson Avenue has been the subject of a fraught saga that goes back several years. Charrington said her family has owned the home for decades, but an LLC that claims to have purchased the home has tried to evict her for the past two years.

Speaking outside the Bedford-Stuyvesant precinct where he was held and before he went to the hospital, Ossé said it was a “very violent, fast, traumatic experience.”

“I was just there to stand for my neighbor who I didn’t want to see her and her family removed from her home,” Ossé said outside the precinct. “To be met with violence from the NYPD for doing my job has been really disheartening and truly traumatic.”

He said he would file a misconduct report, and he advocated for resources and funds to help homeowners fight deed theft.

Deed theft — made through schemes related to forged documents, short-sale, foreclosure-rescue scams and other mechanisms — can strip families of generational wealth, separating them from a valuable asset.

The office of Attorney General Letitia James also indicated it had determined in April 2025 that the situation at Charrington’s home was not a deed theft matter, but instead a property dispute owing to competing claims from the property’s former owners, including Charrington’s father.

In a social media post, James said her office has “been in contact with the resident of this home for over a year to offer guidance and advice on her legal battle.”

The history of the property is complex. 

In 2021, a company called Brooklyn Gates LLC signed an agreement with a family member who had a stake in the property at 212 Jefferson Ave. 

Brooklyn Gates LLC was run by brothers Elliot and Joseph Ambalo and their partner Etai Vardi, whose dealings THE CITY uncovered in a previous investigation. The trio was among the groups of speculators targeting homes in gentrifying, historically Black and Latino neighborhoods whose owners died and left a network of dispersed inheritors. The three men would buy partial deeds from the heirs — often well below the value of the multi-million-dollar homes — and leverage their new partial ownership to force out longtime residents.

By 2023, the LLC had terminated the agreement with the person who claimed to have a stake in the property. Vardi told THE CITY he canceled the contract because he didn’t want to take on such a risky matter. “We saw it’s very complicated with the family. Not for us. It’s too much problems,” he said.

In 2024, another company called 227 Group LLC purchased the home for $1.4 million from several alleged family members as part of an estate of the former owner. Some property records show 227 Group LLC and Brooklyn Gates LLC share the same address in Long Island City. Vardi chalked up that detail to a paperwork mistake, and emphasized his group is not involved with the property. 

An agent behind 227 Group LLC, Simon Blitz, did not immediately respond to a request for comment and another, Daniel Gazal, could not be reached. 

In an email, a spokesperson for the 227 Group LLC called the deed theft allegations false.

What’s in dispute has to do with whether those family members and the estate had the authority to sell the property to 227 Group LLC.

Allman Charrington, Carmella’s father, is in a conservatorship based in Georgia. A conservator is appointed to manage the finances, assets and property of a “ward” who is not competent to manage those affairs.

Georgia attorney Luanne Bonnie, who is listed as Allman’s conservator on property records, signed the deed on his behalf. Carmella and other family members have said the people who signed the deed over to 227 Group LLC did not have the right to do that. (Bonnie did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

A more recent deed, from January 2026, shows Allman Charrington transferring the property to Carmella, his daughter.

A judge sent Charrington to Rikers Island on April 16 after she did not bring her father to court as part of a case related to the conservatorship. Charrington and her family at the brownstone had been caring for him, they said. The city sheriff’s office and marshals who went to the home this morning had been looking for the father.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who made fighting deed theft a priority in his mayoral campaign, on Wednesday morning had not seen the video of Ossé’s arrest, but responded when a reporter described it to him. 

“That’s exactly something that we’re going to follow up on, not just on the nature of this arrest, but also what was the underlying issue that was being protested,” Mamdani said at an unrelated event in Queens. “I know [Ossé’s] been on the front lines of fighting deed theft. It’s especially prevalent in his Council district, and I appreciate, frankly, the efforts that he’s led in the past on ensuring that this is front of mind for all of us.”

Mamdani later posted to social media saying he had “seen the concerning footage of Council Member Chi Ossé’s arrest earlier today and am in touch with [NYPD] Commissioner Tisch about the nature of the arrest.”

Additional reporting from Claudia Irizarry Aponte and Katie Honan.

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Labor and other allies of Mayor Zohran Mamdani are urging him to veto one of two City Council bills aimed at restricting protests around educational facilities, saying the “radical overreach” of the bill limits free speech and endangers New Yorkers.

The two “buffer zone” bills passed March 26 with the goal of targeting hate crimes across the city, with one bill related to religious sites and the other for schools and education facilities.

The religious site bill passed 44-to-5, a veto-proof majority, but the other passed by a 30-to-19 margin — which the mayor could veto. 

The buffer zone laws rose from demonstrations last year outside a pair of synagogues in Manhattan and Queens where some protesters chanted in support of Hamas. The synagogues were hosting an organization that helps American Jews emigrate to Israel and the Israel-occupied West Bank. Critics said Mamdani’s initial comments failed to condemn the pro-Hamas slogans.

The bill focused on “educational facilities” comes after college campuses across the city were rocked by protests against the Gaza war.

Nearly a dozen organizations sent Mamdani a letter on Friday imploring him to veto the bill creating security perimeters around schools and other “educational facilities,” with opponents saying the language is so broad that any location could be deemed one. 

“By defining ‘educational facility’ as any place where ‘educational programming takes place’ and not solely traditional educational institutions, 175-B functionally subjects any building in this city to the proposed law, including the more than 200 public libraries,” the letter said. 

It was signed by the steering committee of the People’s Majority, along with the union representing CUNY professors, United Auto Workers Region 9A, Desis Rising Up and Moving and other organizations.

“The broad reach of the legislation again means that the NYPD must create a plan for just about every building in this city,” the letter said.

Speaker Julie Menin said last month the bills will stop hate crimes. “The increase in hateful acts across the city is absolutely abhorrent, and we have to do something about it,” she said.

Mamdani can veto the bills within 30 days of their passage in the Council, giving him until April 25. He said Thursday he’s still weighing his options.

“I’ve heard from a number of New Yorkers about their concerns about aspects of this legislation,” Mamdani said. “And I will be making a decision on that shortly.”

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Way back in 2025, new mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani promised voters sweeping reform at the NYPD.

The long-shot state lawmaker pledged to kill a controversial gang database and terminate a SWAT-like police unit that had been criticized for over-aggressive tactics.

He would get rid of NYPD teams focused on so-called “quality of life” infractions that some critics claimed target Black and Hispanic New Yorkers.

And he would shift the final word on discipline of bad cops from the police commissioner to a civilian watchdog.

One hundred days into his tenure at City Hall, Mayor Mamdani has either backtracked on these promises or has yet to detail how and when he’ll address candidate Mamdani’s concerns about the police.

Criminal justice reformers and cops alike aren’t sure what to expect from the democratic socialist who made his vow to change the “culture” of the NYPD a central message in his campaign.

‘Herculean Task’

The New York Civil Liberties Union — which supports many of Mamdani’s initiatives — is a little frustrated but steadfastly optimistic. Michael Sisitzky, the group’s assistant policy director, stressed the “preexisting problems with the NYPD that the mayor has inherited, saying it’s a pretty herculean task to right these issues.”

Leaders of the Police Benevolent Association, who are not big fans of the mayor, say their members are skeptical. 

“It’s good that the mayor has not acted on some of his most drastic campaign pledges, but there is still a perception among police officers that the city under his leadership won’t have our backs,” PBA President Patrick Hendry told THE CITY. 

“It is still early, and the mayor has a chance to change that perception, but he needs to make a real effort to hear our concerns and work with us to address them,” Hendry said.

The mayor told the New York Times in an interview published Thursday that he will overrule Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch if he believes it’s necessary to advance reforms, asserting that “as the mayor, ultimately I am responsible for what happens in our city within each and every city agency and department.”

From outsider to Mr. Inside

Mamdani spokesperson Sam Raskin noted some steps toward police reform. The mayor appointed a deputy mayor for community safety, a first step toward the formation of his promised department  intended to reduce the number of volatile police responses to 911 mental health calls. 

City Hall has codified an NYPD policy requiring the department to release body camera footage within 30 days of what Raskin called “critical incidents.”

And police have stopped issuing criminal summonses for “low level” e-bike and cyclist offenses that had been championed by the previous administration. 

Mamdani’s first weeks at City Hall, through April 5, saw a 24% drop in murders and a 20% drop in shootings compared to the same time period last year. All the major crimes have dropped except rape, which rose 8%.

“This administration is moving with urgency to build a safer, fairer city and increase transparency to restore trust in our public safety system — and we’re just getting started,” Raskin said.

Susan Kang, an associate professor of political science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a longstanding member of the Democratic Socialists of America, acknowledged that some DSA members are not happy with Mamdani’s pace of reform, but she said Mamdani’s more measured approach will get better results.

The DSA helped put Mamdani in City Hall — and opposed his decision to reappoint Commissioner Tisch.

“The DSA works outside of institutions. A mayor works within institutions so he has a different set of goals,” Kang said.

From ‘defund’ to ‘reform’

Mamdani’s complicated relationship with the NYPD goes back to 2020 with the newly elected state lawmaker’s repeated demands to “defund the police” during protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a position he later retracted. The mayor’s metamorphosis continued with his decision to retain Tisch, who public defenders say has opposed many criminal justice reforms. 

One key area of disagreement between the mayor and his police commissioner is the database the NYPD compiles of suspected gang members, which Tisch has often praised as a critical public safety tool. Mamdani has a different take.

Last fall, his predecessor, Eric Adams, unveiled relatively tepid reforms that included notifying parents if their child was placed in the system due to suspected gang ties.

In candidate Mamdani’s view, that wasn’t enough. He vowed to eliminate the database altogether, dubbing it a “vast dragnet of New Yorkers.”

Last week, however, the mayor stood silently next to Tisch as she again praised the database, noting police relied on it to get ahead of retaliatory shootings.

On Monday, Mamdani did not directly address questions about whether he still intends to eliminate it, telling reporters he supported Adams’ “reforms,” and that “implementation of those reforms and the results of that are part of the active discussion that we’re having.”

“Coming in with an ambitious agenda to change the police is always a process that takes time, Kang told THE CITY. “If you go in with guns blazing you don’t get buy-in. Mayor Mamdani is doing everything right to have that buy-in that respects the need for public safety as well as the need for human rights.”

A strategic response 

Then there’s the Strategic Response Group, an NYPD unit that City Councilmember Chi Osse, D-Brooklyn, has proposed eliminating over accusations that it has used excessive force on protesters, including at an anti-ICE protest in January. Sisitzky of the NYCLU noted the mayor has yet to weigh in on Osse’s bill, known as the Curb Act.

As a candidate, Mamdani repeatedly called for the unit to be disbanded. Six weeks into his mayoralty, Mamdani praised the response by the NYPD — which included the SRG — to an attack by two men inspired by the terrorist group ISIS after one of them tossed improvised explosive devices at anti-Muslim protesters outside Gracie Mansion.

On Wednesday mayoral spokesperson Raskin said Mamdani “remains committed” to eliminating the Strategic Response Group.

Another split between Mamdani and Tisch centers on the “Quality of Life Teams” she created last year in response to a spike in 311 complaints about low-level malfeasance from public urination to loud music to rowdy behavior. Critics likened it to the “broken windows” approach of targeting smaller-bore crimes with enforcement disproportionately affecting the Black and Hispanic communities.

During the campaign, Mamdani was a steady critic of quality-of-life enforcement. At a January press conference Mamdani deflected a question about their differences over these units, saying, “What we are fully aligned on is the fact that we need to see genuine public safety across the city.”

Tisch quickly stepped in to clarify: “I just want to add that the Quality of Life Division is by no means a return to broken windows policing.”

Candidate Mamdani also took issue with the police commissioner having the final say over disciplinary recommendations for bad cops, proposing that the Civilian Complaint Review Board have the last word. 

Tisch often overrides the CCRB’s calls, including in August when she rejected the recommendation of the CCRB and an NYPD administrative judge to fire a cop who’d fatally shot a driver fleeing an arrest.

Mamdani appears to have backtracked on this, saying after his victory in November that “what I believe is that the CCRB’s recommendations should be taken seriously, that we should ensure they’re able to make those recommendations time and again.”

How many cops? 

One area mayor and his police commissioner appear to agree on is the number of uniformed officers necessary for the NYPD to do its job.

In his first preliminary budget proposal, Mamdani ditched his predecessor Adam’s last-minute plan to hire 5,000 more cops, enraging many Republican and some Democratic politicians who framed that as a cut to the department’s size . 

But Tisch declared the criticism of Mamdani’s decision much ado about nothing. During a recent budget hearing, she noted the department had recently been able to hire 4,000 new officers, bringing the uniformed headcount to the full amount of 35,000 for the first time in four years.

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Prosecutors unsealed an indictment Tuesday alleging the operators of city-funded migrant shelters skimmed $1 million from their no-bid contracts, and pocketed kickbacks from subcontractors they brought in to handle security and food.

The charges filed by U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella in Brooklyn are part of a broader corruption investigation that appears to include a City Council member and a top aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul, according to reports and court documents.

Among those charged was Edouardo St. Fort, a former NYPD sergeant whose firm, Fort NYC Security, was hired by the nonprofit BHRAGS Home Care Inc. that has received millions of dollars in contracts to operate city shelters.

Former BHRAGS’ executives Jean Ronald Tirelus and Roberto Samedy were named as St. Fort’s co-defendants, charged with embezzling $1.3 million from some of the city contracts. Tirelus is no longer with the organization, and Samedy was placed on administrative leave, a spokesperson said. 

Prosecutors alleged they received bribes and kickbacks from St. Fort and a fourth-codefendant, Miguel Jorge, in exchange for steering sub-contracts at the shelters their way.

St. Fort and his company were named in a search warrant first reported by the AP that revealed prosecutors were investigating whether City Councilmember Farah Louis (D-Brooklyn) and her sister, Esther Debbie Louis, received bribes or kickbacks related to shelter contracts.

The AP also reported that investigators were looking into whether Edu Hermelyn received any benefits. He is the husband of Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who is an assemblymember and chair of the Brooklyn Democratic Party. 

Debbie Louis, who has worked in intergovernmental affairs for Gov. Hochul for three years, was placed on leave last week, a spokesperson for the governor confirmed. Farah Louis didn’t immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment. 

BHRAGS is a Brooklyn nonprofit organization that has received more than $185 million in city contracts for homeless shelters, including those for migrants and asylum seekers, city records show.

Charging that Tirelus and Samedy led a nonprofit “that capitalized on the city’s urgent need for homeless shelter providers,” acting Department of Investigation Commissioner Christopher Ryan stated: “Those who exploit the city’s need for homeless shelters endanger the very programs meant to help unhoused people.”

Amelia Fogg, a spokesperson for BHRAGS Home Care, said in a statement that they have “served New Yorkers in need with integrity and the highest ethical standards, and we take the allegations against Mr. Samedy seriously.”

Fogg said Samedy “is on administrative leave, and we have been fully cooperating with law enforcement and will continue to do so.” She said BHRAGS’ chief operating officer, Frances Pierre, “has assumed the role of executive director and will continue our critical work empowering marginalized individuals with compassion.”

Comptroller’s records show St. Fort’s firm, Fort NYC Security, is a subcontractor on two contracts worth nearly $34 million that the city Department of Homeless Services (DHS) awarded on to BHRAGS Home Care Corp. since October 2022 to manage shelters. Both were awarded on an emergency basis which did not require competitive bidding designed to ensure taxpayers get the best value and quality from vendors.

The indictment alleges Tirelus and Samedy received kickbacks from St. Fort in exchange for bringing him on as a sub-vendor to provide shelter security.

Samedy is listed as receiving a salary of more than $376,000 according to BHRAGS 2024 tax forms. Tirelus is listed as BHRAGS chairman and president in 2021 tax forms with no salary listed. The group’s tax forms also reveal the nonprofit’s revenue rose from about $21 million in 2021 to nearly $122 million in 2024.

St. Fort, who retired from the NYPD in 2023, is currently a police sergeant in the division of public safety at UMass Boston, a university spokesperson confirmed. He did not respond to a phone call seeking comment. 

St. Fort owns a security company that also provides security at shelters operated by the Bronx Family Network, according to city data. They’ve received more than $1 million since 2023.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at an unrelated news conference Tuesday that the city “will definitely be looking into” the contracts named in the indictment, but didn’t comment further. 

A spokesperson for City Council Speaker Julie Menin said the council is “closely monitoring the situation based on press reports.”

“New Yorkers deserve confidence in their government,” the spokesperson, Yoav Gonen, said in a statement. “It is essential that the federal investigation proceed fairly and expeditiously to bring this matter to a resolution.”

Additional reporting by Kennedy Sessions.

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The New York City Council on Thursday passed a pair of bills aimed at targeting hate across the city by creating “security perimeters” for protests around houses of worship and schools.

The bill relating to religious sites passed on a 44-to-5 vote, while the bill pertaining to schools and education facilities passed by a narrower 30-to-19 margin.  

Mayor Zohran Mamdani hasn’t taken a position on the bills, which were inspired by pro-Palestine protests outside of Jewish synagogues. The Council would need 34 votes to override a veto by the mayor, who won office as a vocal supporter of Palestine.

Speaker Julie Menin introduced the package of bills earlier this year in her first act as the new leader of the 51-member legislative body. They were part of her five-point plan to combat antisemitism across the city. 

Menin, the first Jewish Council Speaker and the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, was prompted by protests outside of the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan in November and another at a synagogue in Kew Gardens Hills in January where some protesters were chanting in support of Hamas. 

In both cases, the protests happened in response to the synagogues hosting an organization that helps American Jews emigrate to Israel and the Israel-occupied West Bank.

The bills, which initially intended to establish 100-foot “buffers” around schools and houses of worship, evolved as they made their way to a vote, after consultation with the city’s law department, Menin said. 

If the bills become law, the NYPD will have to present and post online their plans for using a “security perimeter” and interacting with protestors and people entering a house of worship or school.

At a press conference before the vote, Menin cited the consistently oversized share of Jewish hate crime victims in New York, and the desire to keep people safe entering houses of worship.

“The increase in hateful acts across the city is absolutely abhorrent, and we have to do something about it,” she said.

But opponents of the bill, including some Council members, say it will limit the core America values of free speech and protest.

“We know that these incoherent bills are a message against dissent, in particular pro-Palestinian voices, in a moment when free speech is under attack,” Councilmember Alexa Avilés, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn, said when voting against the bills. 

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement that the bills are “a surefire way to stifle constitutionally protected, peaceful political protest.”

“As the federal government targets, arrests, and even murders ordinary citizens for peaceful protest, New York City lawmakers must defend the First Amendment — yes, even for ideas they don’t like — and reject these ill-advised bills,” she said.

Menin said she and Mamdani speak frequently, but that he has not specified what he intended to do about the bills now awaiting his signature.

A spokesperson for the mayor, Dora Pekec, said the mayor is “keenly aware of the serious concerns regarding these bills’ limiting of New Yorkers’ constitutional rights, and he will keep these concerns in mind for any bills that land on his desk.”

“He wants to ensure both the right to prayer and the right to protest are protected here in New York City,” she said.

Under the City Charter, the mayor has 30 days to either sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action; if it isn’t vetoed or signed within that time period, it automatically becomes law. 

Sara Vasquez Leyton contributed additional reporting.

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NYPD officers have hit street vendors in Manhattan and Brooklyn with at least seven criminal summonses for vending since a new law went into effect 10 days ago that’s supposed to eliminate such charges.

The seven summonses reported to the Street Vendor Project appear to be an early indication that the NYPD hasn’t trained officers to abide by the new law. 

NYPD data for the total number of summons issued since the new law took effect on March 9 isn’t yet available. 

“It’s a big culture shift for NYPD,” said Street Vendor Project Co-Director Mohamed Attia, pointing to the 3,662 criminal summonses issued by NYPD officers last year. 

“It should have necessitated widespread education within the department to make sure that officers are aware of the laws that have changed and how that would affect their work — so street vendors, our city’s smallest business owners, do not have to suffer the consequences.”

THE CITY reviewed photos shared by the Street Vendor Project of seven criminal summonses issued to five different vendors in Manhattan and Brooklyn to vendors for failing to display their license, failing to display food prices and being too close to a bus stop, curb or hydrant — all things that should have been civil violations under the new law.

An NYPD spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the department was “continuing to train officers on the change in the law.”

“The new law does not entirely prohibit the issuance of criminal court summonses for unlicensed general vending,” the spokesperson added, saying repeat offenders could also still be subject to criminal summonses, though it was unclear which section of the law the spokesperson was referring to. The NYPD did not return a request for clarification.

Victoria Opperman, a spokesperson for City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, who wrote the new law, wasn’t able to immediately confirm that assertion.

The NYPD spokesperson also said they had not been able to locate records of the summonses provided by THE CITY — none of which for unlicensed general vending.

Sam Raskin, a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, said City Hall would defer comment to the NYPD. Mamdani repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he didn’t think street vending should be a quality-of-life concern for the NYPD.

Under the new law, vendors without licenses can now be charged with a criminal violation, rather than a misdemeanor. 

If a vendor with a license violates what are known as “time, place and manner” restrictions, those are now civil infractions. Advocates have long said that criminal charges can lead to negative legal consequences for vendors, many of whom are immigrants.

“Nothing has changed. Every day they’re writing tickets in the street,” said Adham, a 23-year-old halal food vendor, who spoke in Arabic through a translator and who declined to share his last name, fearing retaliation. 

He was hit with a criminal summons over the weekend for failing to display his vending license and has to appear in Criminal Court at the end of March or face a warrant for his arrest. 

In the months before the new law took effect, Adham said he’d received more than a dozen criminal summonses in addition to a flurry of civil summonses issued by the Department of Sanitation and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which are also tasked with street vendor enforcement. 

“It’s every day, four maybe five [civil summonses],” he said. “Yesterday I got two.”

The decriminalization bill passed the Council last June, only to be vetoed by outgoing Mayor Eric Adams. The Council voted to override his veto last fall. 

Krishnan said NYPD officials told the Council last week they were reviewing training efforts to make sure officers understood the law. 

“We are in touch with NYPD about these summonses, and we will be monitoring compliance closely,” he said. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio had pulled the NYPD out of vendor enforcement in 2020, turning endorsement over to the Health and Sanitation Departments. But Mayor Eric Adams restored the police role, with vendors then facing a surge in criminal summonses, as THE CITY reported. 

Mamdani hasn’t said as mayor whether or not he would pull the police back from enforcing vendor laws, and Raskin didn’t return a request for comment about that.

The new law had been in the works for years, along with a long campaign to lift the tight restrictions on vending licenses. In December, the Council also passed another reform to lift the cap on general merchandise vendors from 853, which had been in place since the 1970s. 

The same law will also add 2,200 new food vending permits annually for the next five years, which will bring the number of legal licenses up to more than 20,000 over the next few years.

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