Defendant appeals from a judgment of the Criminal Court, New York County, rendered January 21, 2000 after a jury trial (Eileen A. Rakower, J.) convicting him of harassment in the second degree (Penal Law § 240.26[1]) and resisting arrest (Penal Law § 205.30), and imposing sentence.

PER CURIAM:

Judgment of conviction rendered January 21, 2000 (Eileen A. Rakower, J.) reversed, on the facts, and as a matter of discretion in the interest of justice, and the accusatory instrument is dismissed.

Defendant's conviction of second-degree harassment (Penal Law § 240.26[1]) arises out of what was essentially a landlord and tenant dispute. Evidence at trial was that defendant, the president of the tenants' association of a residential apartment building located on West 170th Street, arranged for a City housing inspection of his mother-in-law's apartment on September 18, 1998; that defendant allowed the City inspector to enter the apartment, but refused access to the building's superintendent, the complainant herein; and that defendant shut the apartment entrance door on the complainant after either "push[ing]" the complainant once in the [*2]chest or "extend[ing]" his (defendant's) arm in order to block the complainant's entry into the apartment. Having weighed "'the relative probative force of conflicting testimony and the relative strength of conflicting inferences that may be drawn from the testimony,'" we find that defendant's harassment conviction is against the weight of the evidence (People v Bleakley, 69 NY2d 490, 495 [1987] [citation omitted]). Whatever incidental physical contact may have occurred during this rapidly escalating, housing-related dispute was not shown beyond a reasonable doubt to have been actuated by defendant's intent to "harass, annoy or alarm" (Penal Law § 240.26) the complainant.

Also infirm is the defendant's conviction of resisting arrest (Penal Law § 205.30), there being no reasonable cause to authorize defendant's arrest on a violation harassment charge involving events which took place outside the presence of the arresting officer (see, CPL 140.10[1][a]; see generally, People v Peacock, 68 NY2d 675 [1986]). Nor can the People be heard to argue that defendant's September 18, 1998 arrest was predicated upon a misdemeanor menacing charge stemming from an unrelated incident that allegedly occurred two months earlier, a theory unsupported by the credible trial evidence and inconsistent with the jury charge as given.

This constitutes the decision and order of the court.