Pointing to emojis and gang signs and not much else, Mayor Eric Adams and his top police officials are claiming that a group of minors who tangled with police in Times Square last Friday are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
At a press conference in the City Hall Blue Room on Tuesday, Adams and his NYPD Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, once again hyped dubious claims around the gang, claims that have fed into the Trump administration's deportation machine. At the same time, the mayor and his police commissioner brushed aside the fact that the NYPD had recently collaborated with ICE in violation of State and perhaps City laws.
Footage of the Midtown episode shows police attempting to intervene in what Tisch described Tuesday as a "wolf-pack style robbery," only to have the alleged robbers briefly resist and fight back, shoving the cops and tossing a basketball and other objects at them before fleeing. Tisch described the melee as an "ambush." "This was a targeted attack," she said, "planned, deliberate and carried out with intent, and it will not be tolerated."
The NYPD responded with an all-out hunt, tracking down four of the youth, one of them 12-years-old. Another turned himself in later.
The teens were taken to the Midtown South precinct, where ICE agents also happened to be. Police sources told NBC the federal agent's presence at the precinct house was a coincidence, and that they had just "stopped in" to "use the restroom."
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