A vandal was busted for lobbing a bottle at a police van in Harlem late Saturday, and another man was nabbed for trying to ignite an NYPD vehicle in Midtown hours later, cops said.
Police and law-enforcement sources said the first incident was not related to local protests over the Tyre Nichols police-brutality slaying in Memphis and that it was unclear if the second was, since the suspect didn’t say anything during his crime.
Albert Plummer, 38, of Harlem threw a glass bottle at the rear driver’s-side window of a marked police van in front of the Apollo Theater at West 125th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard around 10:40 p.m. Saturday, according to police.
A police officer assigned to the Apollo Theater detail was inside the van, an NYPD spokesman said. The bottle shattered the window, the spokesman said.
Plummer was charged with assault, menacing, criminal mischief and reckless endangerment, cops said.
An NYPD spokeswoman said the incident wasn’t part of a protest.
“This was not protest-related,” the spokeswoman said. “He didn’t make any remarks.”
Plummer has previously been arrested about 40 times and has a history of fighting police officers and criminal mischief, police said.
In the second disturbing weekend incident in Manhattan, police observed a man trying to ignite a napkin that was stuffed into a marked cop car’s gas tank around 9 a.m. Sunday, an NYPD spokesman said. The incident, which was caught on video, happened in front of the NYPD’s Midtown South Precinct station house on West 35th Street.
A 24-year-old suspect was arrested a few blocks away, at West 37th Street and Eighth Avenue, and charges are pending, cops said. The man, whose name wasn’t immediately released, has four prior arrests for making terroristic threats and assault, the sources said.
The city Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association union issued a warning to its members Sunday that featured a photo of the suspect in the second crime and urged them to “carefully inspect both Department vehicles and your personal vehicles for any potential sabotage.
“Remain alert and look out for your sister and brother police officers,” the missive said.
Both attacks on city cops came as protests continued nationwide over Nichols’ death at the hands of Memphis cops earlier this month. Video released late Friday showed the fatal beating delivered by police officers that sparked widespread outrage.