Knicks Watch Parties Are Back — Just Not Outside the Garden
Mayor Mamdani says he’s all for Knicks fans celebrating their once-in-a-generation playoff run in public. He’s just not willing to square off with his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, to make it happen.
Mamdani has refused to overrule the NYPD’s shutdown of the massive watch parties outside Madison Square Garden, walking back his initial statement at a press conference that “they will be there” with a later statement from his spokesperson that “it’s not a question of if they’ll happen, but where.”
Tisch — a holdover from the Adams administration retained by Mamdani after demands from the center-right — pulled the plug on the watch parties outside the arena last Thursday after NYPD arrested six members of an approximately 6,000-person crowd.
“It looked right in line with what you would expect in sports demonstrations out on the street,” said Anthony Raganella, a 25-year department veteran and former commander of the NYPD’s disorder control unit.
But the department continues to claim that the crowd was chaotic and violent.
A department spokesperson sent Streetsblog a laundry list of alleged offenses seen in the crowd: “People throwing items at each other, including glass bottles, jumping police barriers, climbing light poles and subway structures, blocking vehicular traffic on Seventh Avenue, drinking in the streets.”
Mamdani’s administration pointed to official watch parties on Monday night at Radio City and the Brooklyn Bowl as signs that it has found a way forward.
But the police department has dug in its jackbooted heels, continuing to defend the need to shut down watch parties in Midtown by pointing to six summonses for disorderly conduct issued as an unofficial crowd gathered outside the arena on Monday night.
“Individuals were climbing on light poles and other structures outside the stadium, blocking cars, jumping police barriers, refusing police orders to disperse, public drinking,” the spokesperson wrote.
The relationship between Tisch and Mamdani has been uneasy from the start, with Tisch reportedly emailing department members to say that she was staying in her post to be a “fierce advocate” for her officers.
“Do the Mayor-elect and I agree on everything?” she wrote in the email. “No, we don’t.”
In February, the department tried to bring assault charges against people who threw snowballs at police officers. Tisch called the snowball throwing “disgraceful” and “criminal.”
“It looks like a snowball fight,” Mamdani said shortly afterward. “I’m not going to be banning snowball fights.”
“Don’t mess with my cops,” Tisch said in response.
The NYPD harsh stance against watch parties outside MSG was questioned by Raganella.
“The crowds are going to come regardless of what the NYPD says,” Raganella said. “They can proactively police it or it they can reactively police it.”
Tisch’s NYPD has reportedly quashed other events this summer — and Mamdani has seemingly done little to push back.
In April, Streetsblog reported that two World Cup watch parties that were already in the works were killed after “feedback” from the NYPD to the Department of Transportation, which took the recommendation and canceled the events. The NYPD’s feedback cited a lack of manpower to police open streets events, many of which have occurred in previous summers with nary an officer at all.
The department also quashed applications for all events overseen by the Street Activities Permit Office, including Streetsblog’s 20th anniversary street fair, claiming the same lack of resources.
Not all law-and-order pols were falling in line behind Tisch.
“New Yorkers deserve to able to enjoy their city,” Bronx Council Member Oswald Feliz, who is also the public safety committee chairman told reporters in an interview on Saturday. “They also pay taxes so that we could have a police department to help ensure that these events do not become chaos.”
The NYPD claims it’s too cash-strapped for these events, but it has found the resources to crack down elsewhere. At a joint press conference last week, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton announced a federal-local team-up to proactively police public spaces.
“We … are being proactive, specifically in parks and public spaces,” Clayton said.
He noted charges against 18 defendants last year for allegedly dealing drugs in Washington Square Park.
“Together with the NYPD, we shut that down,” he said. “We are aware of other areas and we are working with our friends at the FBI and at the NYPD to shut them down as well.”
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