Black Lives Matter NY founder Hawk Newsome busted for clash with court officer
Black Lives Matter Greater NY founder Hawk Newsome was busted at Bronx courthouse following a fierce caught-on-camera clash with a court officer he called “a vagina.”
Newsome was in Bronx Criminal Court on Tuesday to attend a court hearing for an NYPD narcotics sergeant accused of killing moped operator Eric Duprey by throwing a cooler at the escaping suspect. Newsome got upset by court officers ushering him out of the courthouse lobby along with Duprey’s sobbing sister and a small group of outraged supporters.
“You think I’m scared of you? You must be out of your f—ing mind!” the 6-foot-6 Newsome screamed at a court officer, video of the encounter shows.
Newsome was standing just inches from the court officer’s face during the heated exchange, in which he yelled, “You p—y! You see how I’m all up on you? You’re a vagina! A f—ing vagina!”
More than a dozen court officers came up to try to calm the situation, which ended in a brief shoving match, the video shows.
Newsome was taken into custody and given three summonses for disorderly conduct and obstructing governmental administration, officials said.
As court officers ran his name, they learned he had never returned to court to answer summonses he received in Manhattan years earlier.
Before setting him free, court officers took him to an arraignment court room, where the older summonses were quickly adjudicated and vacated, court officials said.
“The only people I am apologetic to is women who were offended by my language because in the heat of the moment, I said some things that could’ve been taken into offense,” Newsome said in an email to the Daily News. “I’m sorry to them for that. But I was doing it in defense of Eric Duprey’s mother, sister and wife.”
He claimed the spat began when a court officer came “screaming” at him and Duprey’s family while they stood outside elevators, ordering them to get out.
“I asked him for a minute. He said, no, you can’t have a minute and then he continues to tell his colleagues that we are hanging out,” Newsome added. “If we were white people standing in the same place not obstructing anyone, he would have addressed us with respect. The whole thing was over disrespect.”
The BLM leader said he previously worked for the Bronx DA’s office, noting, “most of those court officers knew me, that’s why they didn’t take me down aggressively initially.”
NYPD officers packed the courtroom in support of Sgt. Erik Duran, who is facing manslaughter charges for chucking the cooler at Duprey as he fled police over a $20 crack sale in the Bronx — a death the city medical examiner has ruled a homicide.
Newsome has been calling for justice for Duprey since his death in August, dubbing Duran the “Cooler Killer.”
State Attorney General Letitia James filed criminal charges against Duran in January. In addition to manslaughter, he’s facing criminally negligent homicide and assault charges.
