What the hell is going on

A council member allegedly bit a police officer, advice & consent, monument maintenance, Y2K-type outage, at least I was swimming #88

It’s been a busy week. My colleague Gwynne Hogan was all over the story of Councilmember Susan Zhuang allegedly biting a police officer while protesting a new homeless shelter in her district.

Zhuang spoke publicly about her situation yesterday in the district, where she was greeted with a hero’s welcome. Mayor Eric Adams seemed to be more understanding of the situation, despite the alleged violence against a police officer, and the disruption caused by the constant protests — things that, under different circumstances or for different causes, he might be speaking out against.

“You know I really love, like, Councilwoman Zhuang. She's always been pro public safety. She understands the aspects of how do we protest peacefully. I think that it was unfortunate this happened. I reached out and we're going to sit down and try to move forward on this,” he said on Fox 5 this week, adding that “there’s really no excuse for anyone ever biting or assaulting a police officer.”

Speaker Adrienne Adams said she was waiting for the legal process to move forward, but said she didn’t think other council members — particularly those who aren’t already allies of the mayor and are more vocally critical of the police — would be given the same level of understanding

“I honestly don't think that some of my other members would be receiving the same level of grace from the mayor in a sit down conversation right now, I really don't," Speaker Adams said at an unrelated press conference. "The administration actually asked for some kind of proceedings to go forward from a colleague of mine who was doing his job in a hearing and questioning someone from the administration, so where was the sit down there?" (The mayor, for his part, said on that same Fox 5 interview “I've extended grace to everyone and no one could ever question how much I support our law enforcement community in the city from giving them a contract that they've been asking for a long time to giving them the tools to do their job. What I believe is important when you have someone like the councilwoman that has been extremely pro law enforcement we need to find a way to resolve this issue.”)

Zhuang was not very chatty at City Hall on Friday, where she and Brooklyn Democratic Party chair Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn didn’t answer many questions after meeting with the mayor.

There was also a big tech outage this morning, but I enjoyed my F**k Around Friday on the water so didn’t think too much about it.

I also wrote about advice & consent, which the council is pushing to get on November’s ballot.

Other interesting stories

🔸My colleague Melanie wrote about the special Parks Department team who make sure the city’s hundreds of statues stay fresh and clean. [THE CITY]
🔸The mayor had to return hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations given by people doing business with the city [THE CITY]
🔸Trees! [THE CITY]
🔸Oh right, there was a meteor [THE CITY]
🔸I would steal the trash bins of my enemies, for fun [Gothamist]

🍝BIG DEAL YOU HAVE TO CLICK🍝

My mom wrote about my grandmother, love, food, and the last pot from an old Farberware set for The Wave. Special thanks to our friend Paula for giving Fran the space in her weekly column to write so beautifully about her mom! You can read it here.

Thanks for reading!