This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated December 1, 2023
Councilwoman Inna Vernikov was seen and photographed wearing a handgun at a student rally outside Brooklyn College on Thursday, October 12. The following day she was arrested and charged with criminal possession of a firearm. Just over a month later, the charge was dropped due to a missing spring inside the gun that nobody had been aware of.
When you take in all the details, the entire affair is even more outrageous, as is the fact Vernikov will now, seemingly, face no consequences. It is hard to believe that any person without political power would escape prosecution under the same circumstances, bolstering the view many hold that there are two justice systems that deal with crimes differently based on who commits them.
Despite her lawyer claiming in court at one point that the gun seen on her hip in photographs could very well be CGI, Vernikov did brandish her black Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun on that day in front of many eyewitnesses, including NYPD officers. That violated state law prohibiting the possession of firearms at protests and rallies, even with a permit.
As for when action was taken against her, it was not at the moment of the crime by police officers who witnessed it, as it should have been. Not until many hours later, after photographs of Vernikov at the demonstration went viral and people pointed out that she had violated the law, was a decision made to arrest her.
As per reporting in the Daily News, sources familiar with what took place said that Vernikov refused to let officers inside her home when they arrived some time after midnight the next day to seize her weapon and arrest her. She insisted her lawyer be present, which they accommodated, and after her lawyer arrived and spoke with her privately, she surrendered her firearm and turned herself in to the 70th precinct in Brooklyn just before 3 AM.
Weeks after the NYPD took possession of her gun – a gun that police should have immediately seized when it was visibly carried at a protest in violation of the law but did not take custody of until the next day – they determined the recoil spring was missing, making the gun incapable of firing. The charge was then dropped.
The law is clear and dropping that charge was the only choice, which highlights that the law needs to be changed. It also raises many questions. How many other gun charges have been dropped because a mechanical issue was found after the offense? Why was Vernikov not arrested as she illegally brandished a gun in view of officers? Why did it take weeks to find a mechanical issue that let her get off on a technicality?
Another question is why was she not charged with another crime. If someone holds up a bank with a gun that is inoperable, they technically cannot be charged with a gun crime, but they would certainly be charged with robbery. It was clear that Vernikov was intimidating protesters with her gun that day, as she walked freely, back and forth past them in their penned-in areas that she was not confined to. Menacing in the third degree applies for any action that puts another person in reasonable fear of physical injury or death. The law prohibiting firearms at protests exists to protect the right of peaceful assembly, which Vernikov sought to stifle, and protesters could not be aware that her gun was missing a spring.
In a video from that day, Vernikov complained that students were chanting, “Free Palestine,” adding that anyone at the protest was “nothing short of a terrorist without the bombs.” Sweeping generalizations like this that demonize entire groups of people, especially from political leaders, have an effect on the public.
On November 21, police arrested and charged a Brooklyn woman who had been caught on video two weeks earlier throwing her phone and hot coffee at a man and his toddler in a Fort Greene park because he was wearing a Palestinian-style keffiyeh scarf. Hadasa Karavanibozak now faces hate crime assault and harassment charges.
That same day, video appeared online of a former Obama administration official, Stuart Seldowitz, harassing a halal cart vendor in Manhattan for several minutes as he pleaded for him to please stop. In the footage, Seldowitz calls the vendor and all Muslims terrorists and says that “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what, it wasn’t enough.”
Up until the video went viral, Seldowitz worked for Gotham Government Relations, which is chaired by Arthur Aidala, who touts his work serving as Vernikov’s attorney and getting her gun charge dropped.
Vernikov did not directly cause these other hateful acts, but her actions have an outsize impact on the negative trajectory of public discourse around an already incredibly tense matter. Her irresponsible behavior resulting in no consequences only further exacerbates the problem.
