One of the most violent leaders of the Columbia University riots was a professional agitator and limousine liberal. He’s the scion of a billionaire advertising executive who lives in a $3.4 million Brooklyn brownstone, has a model baby mama and a stepmother who’s dating John Cougar Mellencamp.
James Carlson, aka Cody Carlson, aka Cody Tarlow, is a “long-time anarchist,” a senior police official said.
He bought a 2,893-square-foot, three-story brownstone home with four wood-burning fireplaces and a carriage house in Park Slope in 2019 for $2.3 million. According to real estate records and online listings.
The provocateur, who was arrested in 2005, is one of three children of prominent advertising executive Richard “Dick” Tarlow and his wife Sandy Carlson Tarlow.
Dick Tarlow died in 2022 at age 81, leaving behind an estate worth at least $20 million, according to court documents.
Resident of Shelter Island He was known for his work with Revlon, Ralph Lauren, Cuisinart, and Pottery Barn.
He is a staunch supporter of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Accept the school’s John Jay Justice Award.
Sandy Carlson Tarlow, who died in 2003 at the age of 59, was known for defining “the public face of Ralph Lauren.” According to her obituary.
By the time she and her husband sold her eponymous company, Carlson & Partners, to DDB for an undisclosed sum in 2001, the company It had more than 100 employees and a $165 million business..
Dick Tarlow and his second wife, Kristin Kjaerberg, Carlson’s stepmother, lived together in a $15 million Fifth Avenue mansion.
The widow is now Dating John Cougar MellencampPage Six reported last summer.
Carlson, 40, has two children, one of whom is: Model, blonde bombshell Kim Heilman.
Carlson’s four-bedroom, four-bathroom townhouse is currently being renovated, employees told The Post Friday. The property has a large garden with a deck and skylights.
Mr. Carlson’s estranged relatives declined to talk about him.
“We haven’t talked to him. Please leave us alone. He’s been out of our lives for years now,” a woman who answered the phone at his sister’s home said Friday. told.
Sources say Carlson is a mob activist and a lawyer by trade.
City Hall officials said he was considered a “possible leader” of anti-Israel demonstrators who broke into Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday night and barricaded themselves there.
Emergency services officers used military trucks to enter the building early Wednesday morning and arrest the rioters, including Carlson.
He was charged with robbery, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, conspiracy and criminal trespass.
“I observed the defendant on the property with several other individuals,” the officer wrote in the arrest report. “We actually observed exits blocked by doors with broken windows, doors off their hinges, broken desks, and stacked chairs.”
Police officials say Carlson destroyed a camera inside the One Police Plaza cell while in custody around 1 a.m.
He was charged with criminal mischief in that incident.
After his arrest in Colombia on Wednesday, police also charged him with hate crimes, assault and petty theft for allegedly lighting a pro-Israel flag on fire and hitting 22-year-old Carlson in the face with a rock during a protest in April. announced that he had been charged with the crime.
Carlson was among the anti-Israel demonstrators who caused chaos in the city in January by blocking traffic on the Holland Tunnel, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge, officials said.
His rap sheet dates back to at least 2005. At the time, he was charged in San Francisco with participating in the violent “West Coast Anti-Capitalist Mobilization and March Against the G8.” There, protesters cracked the skull of a police officer, nearly killed him, and, city officials said, set a police cruiser on fire. news report.
Officials said Carlson was charged at the time with attempted lynching, malicious mischief, assault on a police officer, aggravated assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon and willful resisting an officer with serious bodily injury. was.
The charges were dropped in 2007, but CNN reported.
Mr. Carlson has no known ties to Columbia University. According to Columbia and Mayor Adams, about 30% of those arrested in the Hamilton Hall occupation were outside agitators.
Carlson could not be reached for comment.
Additional reporting by Jon Levine
