As lawmakers in New York state acted on police accountability legislation on Tuesday, NYPD Officer Vincent D’Andraia was being arraigned on assault and other charges days after a bystander recorded him pushing protester Dounya Zayer, causing her to hit her head on the pavement.

D’Andraia was released after his lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. The officer was ordered to stay away from Zayer who was hospitalized after the May 29 altercation with what she said were a concussion and a seizure.

“Dounya was assaulted for the very reason she was protesting, and that’s police brutality,” said Zayer’s attorney, Tahanie Aboushi, adding that D’Andraia’s supervisor should face punishment beyond an announced reassignment.

“If not for this being on video it would have been business as usual for the NYPD,” Aboushi said.

In a statement announcing the charges, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said he was “deeply troubled by this unnecessary assault.” Zayer, 20, called D’Andraia a coward and suggested the assault would only deepen mistrust of law enforcement.

“I was protesting for a reason,” Zayer said in a video tweeted from her hospital bed. The officer, she added, “should have had the self restraint to not hurt the people he’s supposed to be protecting.”

The police department suspended D’Andraia, 28, last week without pay. His lawyer, Stephen Worth, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. If convicted, he could face a year behind bars, but first-time offenders rarely see any jail time.

D’Andraia is the first New York City police officer to face criminal charges over alleged misconduct exhibited during days of unrest that roiled the city in the wake of Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. Two Buffalo officers were charged with assault last week after they were seen on video shoving a 75-year-old protester to the ground.

D’Andraia’s union said Mayor Bill de Blasio and police leaders were “sacrificing cops to save their own skin” by sending officers out to protests with “no support and no clear plan.”

“They should be the ones facing this mob-rule justice,” Police Benevolent Association president Pat Lynch said. “We will say it again: New York City police officers have been abandoned by our leadership. We are utterly alone in our efforts to protect our city.”

New York state lawmakers repealed a decades-old law Tuesday that has kept law enforcement officers’ disciplinary records secret, spurred by the national uproar over the death of George Floyd.-AP

Vincent D’Andraia was being arraigned on assault and other charges days after a bystander recorded him pushing protester Dounya Zayer, causing her to hit her head on the pavement.

New York City cop faces criminal rap for shoving woman protester to ground