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One of the most violent leaders of the Columbia University riots is said to be a career firebrand and limousine liberal — the scion of millionaire advertising executives who owns a $3.4 million brownstone in Brooklyn, There’s a model mom and a stepmom who’s dating John Cougar Mellencamp.
Senior police source says James Carlson, aka Cody Carlson, aka Cody Tarlow, is “a long-time anarchist.” .
In 2019, he bought his own 2,893-square-foot, three-story brownstone in Park Slope for $2.3 million, complete with four wood-burning fireplaces and a carriage house, according to property records and online listings house.
The instigator, who was arrested in 2005, was prominent advertising executive Richard “Dick” Tarlow and his wife, Sandy Carlson Tarlow’s three children.
Court documents show that Dick Tarlow died in 2022 at the age of 81 and had an estate worth at least $20 million.
The Shelter Island resident is known for his work with Revlon, Ralph Lauren, Cuisinart and Pottery Barn.
He is a loyal supporter of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and helps fund the school’s John Jay Justice Award.
Sandy Carlson Tarlow, who died in 2003 at age 59, was credited with defining “Ralph Lauren’s public image,” according to her obituary.
When she and her husband sold their eponymous firm, Carlson & Partners, to DDB in 2001 for an undisclosed sum, it had more than 100 employees and $165 million in revenue.
Dick Tarlow lives with his second wife, Carlson’s stepmother, Kristin Kehrberg, in a $15 million mansion on Fifth Avenue.
The widow is now dating John Kugel Mellencamp, Page Six reported last summer.
Carlson, 40, appears to have two children, including one with blonde beauty model Kim Heyrman.
Workers told The Washington Post on Friday that the four-bedroom, four-bathroom townhouse owned by Carlson is currently being renovated. The property has a large garden with decking and skylights.
Carlson’s estranged relatives declined to talk about him.
“We don’t talk to him. Leave us alone. He’s been out of our lives for years,” a woman who answered the phone at his sister’s home said Friday.
Sources say Carlson is a provocateur and a lawyer.
City Hall sources said he was viewed as a “possible leader” of the anti-Israel protesters who broke into Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday night and barricaded themselves inside.
Police from emergency services used a military truck to enter and arrest rioters, including Carlson, in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
He was charged with burglary, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, conspiracy and criminal trespass.
“I observed the defendant and several other individuals at the scene,” an officer wrote in the arrest report. “I did observe doors with broken windows, doors with hinges falling off, broken tables and exits blocked by stacked chairs.”
Police sources said Carlson destroyed a camera inside a holding cell at One Police Plaza while he was being detained around 1 a.m.
He was charged with criminal mischief in connection with the incident.
Police also charged Carlson with hate crimes, assault and petit larceny after he was arrested in Colombia on Wednesday for allegedly setting fire to an Israeli supporter’s flag and using a flag during a protest in April, police said. The rock struck the 22-year-old man in the face.
Carlson was among the anti-Israel protesters who wreaked havoc in the city in January by blocking traffic in the Holland Tunnel and the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges, sources said.
His criminal record dates back to at least 2005, when he was charged in San Francisco for participating in the violent “West Coast Anti-Capitalist Mobilization and Anti-G8 March” in which protesters cracked a police officer’s skull and nearly killed him He, and attempted to burn a police patrol car, according to City Hall sources and news reports.
Carlson was charged with attempted lynching, malicious mischief, battery on a police officer, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and intentionally resisting a police officer with serious bodily injury, sources said.
The charges were dropped in 2007, according to CNN.
Carlson has no known ties to Columbia University. About 30 percent of those arrested in the Hamilton Music Hall takeover case were outside agitators, according to Columbia University and Mayor Adams.
Carlson could not be reached for comment.
Additional reporting by Jon Levin
