NYC councilmember wants to ban tickets for spitting after arrest video circulates

A New York City councilmember wants to strike spitting from the NYPD’s list of ticketable offenses after a video circulated on social media this week showed a spitting summons escalating into a forceful police arrest.

The video, which was taken last Saturday evening in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood shows an NYPD officer ticketing a man minutes before the officer grabbed the man by the collar, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him. An NYPD spokesperson later confirmed the incident and that the ticket the officer was writing was for spitting.

Over the last fiscal year, the NYPD has issued more than 200,000 civil and criminal summonses in its push to crack down on so-called quality of life issues, like spitting, public urination and open container violations. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch launched the initiative under previous Mayor Eric Adams, and has continued it under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. NYPD officers ticketed people for spitting 549 times in that period, according to records kept by the city’s trials and hearings office.

Critics of the quality of life crackdown have accused Mamdani of backsliding on his campaign to overhaul public safety in the city by focusing on a community-based approach.

The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the arrest and the broader crackdown.

The video drew condemnation from activists and residents who said it was the latest example of excessive police enforcement in the neighborhood in recent months. Councilmember Chris Banks said Thursday that he’ll propose legislation to strike spitting from the city's litter ordinance.

“We all want clean and safe and orderly neighborhoods, but we want to make sure that it's not at the expense of people's dignity,” Banks said. “And it can't be an excuse for the unnecessary or disproportionate confrontations that we're seeing.”

In the video, two officers can be seen writing a ticket to a man the department later identified as 21-year-old Abdoulaye Traore. It’s unclear from the video why the encounter escalated, but eventually one of the officers approaches Traore and stands face-to-face with him. Troare shouts at the officer as the officer leans into him before grabbing him by the collar, throwing him to the ground and handcuffing him.

“This is why I gotta always pray for my son,” the woman filming the encounter says at one point. After the arrest, the woman shouts at the young man. “Don’t act out.  Don't act out. Just relax.”

Brad Weekes, an NYPD spokesperson who viewed officer body-camera footage of the incident, said Traore spit on the ground once. Police then gave him a warning, before he spit again. At that point, the officers began to issue him a ticket, Weekes said.

The incident escalated after the ticket had been issued and Traore asked the officer for a business card, Weekes said. As the officer searched for the card, Traore said twice, “If you didn’t have that badge, I’d slap the s--- out of you.”

Police did not share body camera footage with Gothamist. Traore could not be reached for comment.

Traore was ultimately charged with obstructing governmental administration in the second degree and harassment in the second degree. He was released without bail at his first court appearance, according to court records.

Banks, whose district includes Brownsville and parts of East New York, said he and his staff are still drafting the bill and he hopes to introduce it soon. He pointed to the Council's decision to legalize jaywalking in 2024 as a potential model.

“That shouldn't be the reason to stop someone, not in this day and time,” Banks said. “We’ve seen how interactions between young Black and brown men particularly have become a death sentence for them or has got them involved in the criminal justice system.”

In Brownsville, residents said police officers routinely ticket people for minor infractions, but they said serious crimes often go unpunished.

Luke Lazarre, 42, who was working out with his friend Gregory Evans, 42, in Betsy Head Park, called it “overpolicing at all times.”

“The [police] presence is there,” Lazarre said. “But crime is still happening. So it's like as much as you see the police presence, there's still crime going on upon crime.”

Evans said his e-bike was stolen from Eastern Parkway three months ago, but even though he notified police and it’s been seen around the neighborhood, it hasn’t been recovered.

“You got more to do than to police the area of people smoking in the park,” he said. “There's more things going on in the world than that and spitting on the ground.”

Brownsville is a relatively small neighborhood in Central Brooklyn that has the nation's highest concentration of public housing, according to a study published by the city. In 2023, it recorded a poverty rate of 32%, according to a study conducted by New York University. Asked about the community’s perception of local policing, Weekes noted that major crime in the area is down 14% year to date. The number of shooting victims and shooting incidents has also decreased.

The Rev. Kevin McCall, a Brooklyn activist and the pastor of Kingdom Justice Church, organized a rally late Thursday afternoon outside the local precinct to build support for Banks’ proposal to end spitting as a crime.

McCall spoke to Gothamist by phone earlier in the day.

“He's traumatized about what transpired,” McCall said of Traore. “He is very hesitant to be able to speak about what transpired … All he did was spit on the floor.”

McCall, who said he had viewed body camera footage of the arrest at the precinct, added that the officer never tried to de-escalate the situation.

“At no time did the officer give the 21-year-old kid a warning at all,” McCall said. “He didn't use his discretion at all.”

At the rally, the woman who took the video of the incident introduced herself as Ronda Langhorne. She described Traore as “tired” and “exhausted,” not confrontational. “ At no point this young man fold his fists,” she said.

“I'm asking the community and all these leaders that is around me to help us fight to stop that law of spitting on the street,” Langhorne said. “ There's more serious things for us to deal with instead of just to spit in the street.

Last week, Gothamist reported that of the 98,000 civil tickets issued by NYPD officers in the last fiscal year, nearly half were dismissed by hearing officers because they were defective.

Charles Lane contributed to this report.