NEW YORK — A social media content creator was arrested Thursday after New York City police said he was one of a number of people who pelted officers with snow and ice during a massive snowball fight in Washington Square Park this week.

Gusmane Coulibaly, 27, was charged with obstructing governmental administration, a misdemeanor, and harassment, a non-criminal violation.

He appeared in handcuffs and wearing an olive-green sweatsuit during his arraignment Thursday evening in Manhattan criminal court. He wasn't asked to enter a plea, and was released, pending his next court date on April 9.

Coulibaly didn't speak during the brief hearing, which was attended by at least a dozen uniformed police officers and police union officials.

But George Vomvolakis, his attorney, told the judge that the “circumstances surrounding his arrest have been politicized.” He suggested Coulibaly was caught in the middle of a rift between the police department and city hall.

“I don’t want to minimize what happened to the officers, but I think the police department is using this because of their dislike or disdain for the mayor,” Vomvolakis said. “I think they’re taking it out on Mr. Coulibaly. They want to pick a fight with the mayor.”

He maintained there was no evidence that there were rocks or ice packed into the snowballs hurled at officers, as the police officers' union and others have said.

“What I saw in the video didn’t look like an attack,” Vomvolakis said. “Did it go a little past, you know, jokes and fun? Was it possibly a little disrespectful to the police? Yes.”

Patrick Hendry, the police union president, pushed back at those assertions.

“The notion that this was a playful snowball fight obviously is not true,” Hendry told reporters after the proceeding. “This was an attack on the uniform that these police officers wear so proudly every day. They came after these police officers, pelting them with ice, rocks.”

Monday’s snowball fight, which appeared to be organized by social media content producers, caused a chaotic scene as a large crowd amassed at the popular park to wing snowballs at each other during a winter storm.

Prosecutors said in court that officers arrived at the park after a 911 call about a disorderly group, including people climbing on a roof.

Video from the incident shows a large group of people following police officers, showering them with snowballs and jeering, as they retreat to their vehicles outside the park. Videos also showed officers shoving at least two people to the ground while getting hit from all directions by snowballs.

The department has said multiple officers were hit in the face with snowballs, and a spokesperson for the union has said two police officers were treated at a nearby hospital for face, head and neck injuries.

Hendry said he was disappointed that prosecutors didn’t charge Coulibaly with assaulting an officer — the felony offense police originally arrested him on.

“It sends a horrible message to these police officers right here that the mayor is not going to have our backs,” he said, standing alongside other officers. “You’re putting a target on these police officers’ backs.”

Assistant District Attorney Victoria Notaro said prosecutors determined Coulibaly was involved in the frozen fracas, but couldn’t prove that his snowball slinging caused the officers’ injuries.

Notaro said video showed Coulibaly throwing a snowball that struck the left side of an officer’s face but did not find evidence showing that the officer’s injuries were caused “directly by this defendant’s conduct.”

The officer sustained injuries including redness, tenderness and pain to his eye, head and neck, Notaro said.

“We will continue to investigate,” she added.

Vomvolakis said Coulibaly is a content creator who makes “elaborate videos” including a recent one in which he approached a stranger in a Bronx subway, acted as if he knew him and said he was owed money.

That interaction got Coulibaly arrested for attempted robbery — a charge that Vomvolakis said he was confident would be dismissed.

Coulibaly has hundreds of thousands of followers across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and other social media platforms, where he posts under the moniker Diaper Man.

The snowball fight has also highlighted the starkly differing views of the mayor and his police commissioner, who had originally been appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, played down the fracas as a “snowball fight that got out of hand” and suggested he did not think criminal charges were warranted.

The city's police department has pursued the matter, releasing images of four people it said it was searching for. Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, has called the snowball fight “disgraceful” and “criminal.”