Gloversville Police Provoked Dispute Says Sno Kone Joe in Interview [e180]

Nasir and Matt are joined by Josh Malatino of Sno Kone Joe to hear his side of the story behind the alleged altercations and arrest involving another ice cream truck vendor and the Gloversville police. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: And we’re doing a recap episode I think today, right, Matt? Of an episode that we did, I think, it was two weeks ago or a week ago. I always get the timings messed up. MATT: Yeah, recap or follow-up, I don’t know. It’s not similar to an episode we’ve done before but I’m looking forward to this one. It should be pretty good. NASIR: We covered a dispute between two ice cream truck owners. I’m not sure exactly how it works but we covered it between Sno Kone Joe and Mr. Ding-A-Ling. Actually, Sno Kone Joe or the owner of Sno Kone Joe actually reached out to us, wanted to set some of the record straight because, obviously, you know, we just read what we see online, and who knows how truthful that is? Matt, who do we have today? Why don’t you make a nice little introduction for Josh here. MATT: Yeah, like you said, we have Josh. Is it Malatino? JOSH: Yes, that’s correct. MATT: Josh, like I said, the owner of Sno Kone Joe and we can only go as far as what we were able to read online when we did the episode before so we’re really glad to have you here to kind of get your side of the story. Just to do a quick recap of what we talked about before, or at least how we had heard it or read it, there was a dispute between you and Mr. Ding-A-Ling and, from what we read, there was an arrest for stalking and harassment, et cetera. Eventually, the charges I believe were dropped against you. I guess the first question is, you know, kind of give us your first-hand take on really what happened here. JOSH: Well, back in 2013, my ex-girlfriend and myself had a permit in the city of Gloversville to vend ice cream. We had two trucks that were in the city that have roughly 15,000 people on the high end. Sno Kone Joe has been in the city for… this would be the 46th season of it. There was a previous owner. My family had bought the business out. My ex-girlfriend had bought a truck and we were allowed to use another truck. Back in 2013, we were out selling ice cream. On different days, these alleged incidents happened. The first incident would have been with me, myself, on April 16, 2013. The cops were alleging that, as Hollister was going west on 8th Ave. in the city, I was going east and we completely just bypassed each other. Hollister testified that he was going about 20 miles an hour with his ice cream truck with his music on and I was going slow, with my music on, in the opposite direction, and I allegedly yelled, “This is my town!” which I did not yell. But, even say I did, what kind of crime is that? It’s not a crime. So, that was the only incident we had on that day. I was arrested for that sole incident – that was my harassment charge. NASIR: You were arrested for that? JOSH: I was arrested for that; that was my harassment charge. MATT: Wow. NASIR: And that was the sole allegation at that time, right? JOSH: Excuse me? NASIR: I said that was the sole allegation at that time on April 16th that you had yelled out that, “This is my town!” JOSH: That was allegedly what I yelled. That was what I was arrested for – for harassment. So, people think that the stalking charge was for following. They had nothing to do with following. It was more or less stating that we were offering free ice cream from our business which in turn was jeopardizing another person’s business. On April 28th I believe – between the 26th and 28th of 2013 – I was vending ice cream and Hollister had come past me. He drove past me, okay? When he took a right on to Spring Street, I had no idea where he was going to be. We were just following a route that’s been followed for, at that time,

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