NYPD investigating 3 weekend incidents in Brooklyn as possible hate crimes
By Laura Studley, CNN
Officers with the New York City Police Department’s hate crimes unit are investigating three incidents in Brooklyn over the weekend that have drawn the attention of Mayor Eric Adams.
Two Jewish men were assaulted on Friday and a swastika was painted on a school bus Sunday, police said. In a statement on Twitter, Adams said that “hatred won’t be tolerated in our city and that “Anti-Semitic acts of violence are an attack on every New Yorker and they will be met with the force of the entire city.”
In the first incident, at around 10:15 p.m. Friday, a 44-year-old Jewish man was attacked at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Marcy Avenue, police said. There were no injuries reported.
A few minutes later, another man was attacked from behind as he walked in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, police said. Surveilance footage provided by the NYPD, shows the 24-year-old man walking along a street when he is attacked from behind.
The suspect appears to run in the opposite direction after striking the man, the video shows. Police said the victim, who was dressed in traditional Hasidic clothing, reported pain in his face.
On Sunday morning, at around 10:45 a.m., a school bus was reported to have had swastikas spray-painted on its side. The bus was at the corner of Division Avenue and Rodney Street.
CNN has reached out to investigators to find out whether police believe the incidents are related.
Hate crimes data provided by the NYPD shows that there were 198 attacks on the city’s Jewish community last year, resulting in 58 arrests.
In recent weeks, a hostage standoff in Texas, vandalism at two Chicago synagogues, flyers with anti-Semitic language being distributed in several states and even “The View” host Whoopi Goldberg’s comments on the Holocaust have made Jewish people more vigilant, experts and Jewish advocates said.
Anti-Semitic incidents in the US have been on the rise for years, with 941 incidents in 2015 and 2024 incidents tracked in 2020 by the Anti-Defamation League.
“These issues are happening in our houses of worship, and in the supermarkets where we shop and in the communities where we live,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the organization’s CEO.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
