EXCLUSIVE: AG Letitia James Backs Chi Ossé’s Arrest Story
DEKALB AVE — New York Attorney General Letitia James is backing up city councilman Chi Ossé’s story.
On Wednesday morning, police arrested Ossé and three activists outside a Brooklyn brownstone, where they were trying to stop an eviction. The councilman said he was there as part of his broader effort to draw attention to deed thefts, which have grown rampant in Black parts of Brooklyn like his district.
Footage of the incident went viral and inspired a wave of support for the councilman. Even Council Speaker Julie Menin rallied next to him at a press conference after his release. Ossé said he was diagnosed with a concussion afterward and planned to file a complaint about how police handled him.
Soon after, though, the attorney general’s office undercut his story and told reporters that the home where Ossé was arrested did not qualify as an example of deed theft. Critics of the mayor delighted in what appeared to be a manufactured moment of valor from one of the council’s most digitally savvy members.
But Friday morning, the Attorney General clarified the incident “originated from deed theft.”
“Technically, it wasn’t a deed theft. It emanated from deed theft,” James told the Judge Street Journal in an interview Friday morning. “It originated from deed theft, but it was an eviction proceeding.”
She added that her office had been involved in that case “for some time. And at the end of the day, I’m glad that the council member focused on bringing to light the problem of deed theft—an issue that I have been focusing on for a very long time.”
The Jefferson Avenue brownstone where police arrested Ossé has been the center of a years-long dispute, as The City reported, that essentially boils down to whether some of its inheritors had the authority to sell their shares to a buyer called Group LLC.
“I’ll leave the exact terminology [and] legal determination to those who are charged with the prosecution of it,” Mamdani said today when asked about the home not qualifying as deed theft. “But I would add that what horrifies so many is not just in that moment but the fact that this is a glimpse into a much larger crisis that is affecting so many across not just Brooklyn, but frankly, New York City as a whole.”
James’s clarifying comments came after a lengthy press conference, where Mamdani announced the opening of a new city office dedicated to fighting deed theft.
Ossé told reporters that he had been in talks with Mamdani about a deed theft office going back to his mayoral campaign last year, and that today’s announcement—with a viral news peg—came after months of work.
“I hate this narrative around this mayor not being a mayor for Black people,” Ossé said this morning. “The last mayor was Black, and he didn’t do crap on deed theft.”
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