New Videos Contradict NYPD Account Of Lead-Up To Times Square Attack On Cops

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Newly released video from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg appears to conflict with the police account of an interaction with a group of migrants that quickly escalated into a melee that triggered nationwide outrage.

The DA released the footage three hours after a press conference on Thursday where Bragg announced six new indictments in the Jan. 27 attack. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny had said the attack began when officers asked a group of men blocking the sidewalk outside a West 42nd Street migrants shelter to disperse.

“Everybody disperses except for Mr. Brito,” Kenny said, referring to 24-year-old Yohenry Brito, who was indicted earlier in the week and is being held on Rikers Island on $15,000 bail. “He turned around and got confrontational with the police officers. He refused a lawful order.”

But the newly released video footage appears to directly conflict with that account.

Officer body camera videos and surveillance footage show Brito was originally standing with the other men around a concrete traffic bollard at the edge of the sidewalk outside of a migrant shelter as people walked by them unhindered.

A police officer then approaches Brito, swatting his jacket with his hand and saying “Let’s go. Vamos.” Brito, backing away from the officer, responds in Spanish: “Don’t touch, don’t touch me.” The officers order the men to “Go to West Four One.”

As the men start walking away, some of them chant lyrics from a song in Spanish by the Puerto Rican rapper Hades 66. The surveillance footage shows Brito walking down the sidewalk away from the police officers,