2024-02-13 22:29:33
What you should know
- Another man believed to be connected to the police assault in Times Square last month was arrested Tuesday morning, three law enforcement officials familiar with the matter told NBC New York.
- Eighteen-year-old Yarwuin Madris was arrested Tuesday by NYPD detectives and Homeland Security Investigations agents at a building in the Bronx, sources said.
- It is not known what specific charges he faces. However, last Thursday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged seven people with felonies and other charges in connection with the same assault on police officers in Times Square that Madris is allegedly linked to.
NEW YORK — Another man believed to be connected to the police assault in Times Square last month was arrested Tuesday morning, three law enforcement officials familiar with the matter told NBC New York.
Eighteen-year-old Yarwuin Madris was arrested Tuesday by NYPD detectives and Homeland Security Investigations agents at a building in the Bronx, sources said.
Madris’ attorney information was not immediately known. It is also unknown what specific charges he faces. However, last Thursday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged seven people with felonies and other charges in connection with the same assault on police officers in Times Square that Madris is allegedly linked to.
Bragg’s office presented the case to a grand jury last week amid growing pressure over his decision not to seek bail for five of the six suspects originally detained. Top police and union officials, as well as Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, argued that people who attacked NYPD officers should face harsher immediate consequences than a later court date.
For his part, Bragg said there was widespread confusion surrounding the identity of the men, a group of whom are seen in blurry surveillance footage descending on the two officers outside a 42nd Street shelter.
Madris is reportedly one of the additional suspects police were still searching for in connection with the Times Square attack. His arrest comes after much of the narrative surrounding the attack and those arrested has changed as the circumstances may not have been what they seemed, according to a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation.
Police body video released by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office last Wednesday shows police telling the group of Hispanic men to move as they gathered at the edge of a sidewalk in Times Square. The I-Team, NBC New York’s investigative team, discovered that the NYPD lieutenant who tried to arrest one of the men, who happens to be a migrant, in Times Square was found responsible in a police brutality case that It cost New York City taxpayers $5 million in legal fees.
According to a federal civil rights complaint, Lt. Ben Kurian, the police officer seen on body camera video fighting with a migrant resisting arrest on a Times Square sidewalk, was part of a group of officers accused of beating and strangling a man in his own home in 2011. In January, Kurian found himself in the middle of a controversial arrest again, when he attempted to handcuff a migrant for failing to disperse when asked to move off the sidewalk on West 42nd Street near 7th Avenue.
In the Times Square incident, the officer repeatedly yells “let’s go,” urging the group of youths to disperse, but when one of the individuals fails to move fast enough, Kurian pushes him against the wall of an adjacent building and a fight ensues. he fights with the suspect trying to escape, while several of his supporters try to block the arrest by physically removing the police officers from the suspect.
The I-Team could not reach Kurian for comment, but in the civil rights case, he denied using excessive force. He claimed he was the one being attacked when he responded to a 911 call and encountered a chaotic fight already in progress inside the Queens residence.
Meanwhile, in the Times Square case, the NYPD said the reason police initially confronted the group of men was because they were blocking the sidewalk and the reason they attempted to arrest the initial suspect, Yohenry Brito, 24, went because he couldn’t comply with the order to move forward. Brito has been charged with second-degree assault and is now being held at Rikers Island. Six other co-defendants have also been charged in the case that caused uproar over the initial release of some defendants without bail.
NYPD chiefs have described the sidewalk altercation as a clear case of defiance of a police order.
“The crowd is given the order to please disburse, they are blocking the sidewalk. “Everyone shells out except Mr. Brito,” said Joseph Kenney, chief of detectives for the NYPD. He “turned around and faced the police officers. He refused a legal order. “They tried to arrest him and the riot begins.”
But not everyone agrees with the NYPD’s official characterization of the video.
“From what I’m seeing, it didn’t have to go that far,” said Neville Mitchell, a defense attorney not involved in the case. “Words should not be enough to make the police act the way they did. You should make sure that in this city the police officers are able to de-escalate tensions.”
Mitchell said body camera video released by the Manhattan district attorney appears to show that pedestrians had no apparent problems passing on the sidewalk.
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