An incident in which an assailant with a history of violence bit a police officer’s ear, requiring 20 stitches, has raised concerns about the safety of New York City’s public servants. The assailant, identified as 32-year-old Donte Bynon, reportedly shouted obscenities at two NYPD officers en route to a subway station at West 137th and Broadway in Harlem.
As Bynon continued to walk alongside a parked NYPD patrol car, one of the officers felt compelled to exit the vehicle in an attempt to calm him down. However, when officers tried to detain Bynon, the situation escalated, culminating in Bynon biting the officer’s left ear, causing a laceration, bruising, and bleeding. The Friday morning altercation resulted in the officer needing 20 stitches to close the wound, as confirmed by the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.
The New York Post reported that Bynon’s defense attorney, Paul Lee, offered an explanation for his client’s actions in court on Saturday. According to Lee, Bynon was on his way home from his mother’s house and was “talking to himself” while “acting under some stress” when he encountered the officers.
Despite city prosecutors requesting a $35,000 cash bail, Judge Judy Kim granted the attorney’s request for supervised release. Bynon has been released with a return court date scheduled for October.
This incident has brought attention to Bynon’s criminal history, as a law enforcement source revealed that he had had six prior arrests, three of which were violent. In 2015, Bynon was charged with resisting arrest, and in 2016 he allegedly assaulted an MTA employee. Moreover, on April 27 of this year, he allegedly assaulted a police officer by knocking him down and repeatedly punching him in the face, according to the source.
This incident comes amid other concerning reports of violence in New York City, including a neighbor who died after being beaten on the street in broad daylight and spending three weeks in a coma, a woman who was beaten and abused on the roof of a building by a man who had hired her on Facebook, and three people who were attacked with scissors on the streets of New York’s famed West Village.