Online streamer Kai Cenat charged in riot due to his Union Square giveaway Friday afternoon, NYPD says
Police in New York City struggled to control a crowd of thousands of people, many of them minors, who gathered in Manhattan's Union Square for an Internet personality's videogame console giveaway that got out of hand Friday night. Credit: Marcus Santos
An online streamer is being charged with inciting a riot and unlawful assembly after his internet post drew thousands of youths to Union Square — and the gathering descended into rioting, according to the NYPD.
Kai Cenat — who streams on platforms like Twitch and YouTube — was detained Friday by the NYPD as thousands of the youths clamored for giveaway electronics he had promised in his post. Some threw punches, hurled objects, set off firecrackers and attacked police officers. Criminal charges against him were announced later in the evening.
At least 65 arrests were also made from the crowd — 30 of whom were juveniles — according to NYPD chief of department Jeffrey Maddrey.
“This is a group of young people that we had to be very, very delicate in how we handled this, all right? We wanted these kids to just comply with us and leave, but we were met with a lot of resistance. We were attacked,” he said late Friday at a news conference.
The event was prompted by Cenat, who had promised to give away PlayStation videogame consoles and other electronics at 4 p.m. Cenat couldn’t be reached for comment.
The first crowds — a few hundred youths — started gathering before 1 p.m., Maddrey said. Soon, there were thousands at the event, for which the streamer did not have a permit. The crowd grew unruly and spread beyond Union Square Park.
Some youths grabbed and threw plates from diners eating outside, destroyed vehicles, attacked vendors and defied police orders. He said some youths broke into a nearby construction site and stole tools to use in the chaos. Several people were injured and taken to the hospital, including police officers, Maddrey said.
Video online shows a chaotic scene, including unruly and violent young people misbehaving in the streets, as well as rough arrests by the NYPD. In one video posted to Twitter by a photojournalist, two officers are seen grabbing a youth who appeared to be walking away; one of the officers slams the youth’s head into the rear window of a taxicab, shattering the glass, during an arrest. It wasn’t clear what, if anything, the youth had been doing.
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
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