New York City is increasing its police presence in some Brooklyn neighborhoods with large Jewish populations after a string of possibly anti-Semitic attacks during Hanukkah, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday.
Besides making officers more visible in Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg, police are to boost visits to houses of worship and some other places, the mayor said on Twitter.
“I feel pained that in this society, a place that is supposed to be of respect for everybody, a season when we’re supposed to be respecting everybody, we see hate rearing its very ugly head. We will not accept it,” the Democrat said during a visit later Friday to Crown Heights, where he met with some representatives of the local Jewish community.
Around the city, police have gotten at least six reports this week — and eight since Dec. 13 — of attacks possibly propelled by anti-Jewish bias.
“It’s something that’s very alarming and we treat it very seriously,” New York City Police Department Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison told at a news conference.
The attacks have happened as Jewish communities in the New York City metro area were already on edge after a deadly Dec. 10 shooting rampage at a northern New Jersey kosher market.
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said that the attack was driven by hatred of Jews and law enforcement.
“The persistent and violent anti-Semitic attacks on Jews in the New York area has reached a crisis level,” said Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, a large Jewish charity.
The latest incident occurred at about 12:40am on Friday, when a woman slapped three other women in the face and head after encountering them on a Crown Heights corner, police said.
The victims, aged between 22 and 31, suffered minor pain, police said.
Tiffany Harris, 30, was arrested on a hate crime harassment charge. She was awaiting arraignment on Friday.
Her arrest came hours after a hate crime assault arrest on Thursday afternoon in Brooklyn’s Gravesend neighborhood, where, according to police and court documents, a woman was hit in the head with a bag by an attacker who jumped in front of her, made anti-Semitic comments and vowed that “your end is coming to you.”
The victim, 34, was with her three-year-old son.
On Monday, a Miami man was charged with hate crime assault after police said that he made an anti-Semitic remark and attacked a man in midtown Manhattan.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told a state hate crimes task force to help police investigate the attack, calling it “a horrific and cowardly act of anti-Semitism.”
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