‘The Bite’: Democrats Debate Councilwoman’s Bizarre Assault Charge

Susan Zhuang, a first-year City Council member from Brooklyn, was charged with assault for biting a police officer. Democrats are split over how harshly to reprimand her.

A midsummer City Council meeting in New York can often be a sleepy event, but the gathering on Thursday was a clear exception.

Everyone, after all, was still talking about the Bite.

A day earlier, Susan Zhuang, a first-year Democratic councilwoman from Brooklyn who ran on a law-and-order message, was charged with assault after the police said she had bitten an officer at a protest over a proposed homeless shelter.

So, as the Council convened its so-called stated meeting, the formal gathering during which bills are introduced or passed, Ms. Zhuang drew much of the attention — and she wasn’t even there.

She held her own news conference near the scene of her alleged crime in Brooklyn, although a police photo of the bloody circular gash on the officer’s arm put Ms. Zhuang more in the position of explaining the confrontation than denying it.

Speaking in front of an enthusiastic crowd of well-wishers, Ms. Zhuang said that she was trying to protect an older woman who had tumbled to the ground by police barricades erected at the protest. She said that she and other protesters had asked in vain for a barricade to be removed to give the woman safe passage, and the situation quickly deteriorated.