NYPD ups patrols after reports of eight anti-Semitic incidents

NEW YORK >> The New York Police Department is stepping up patrols in three Brooklyn neighborhoods after a surge of anti-Semitic crimes reported to the police in the last two weeks, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday.

Police officers are scheduled to patrol the streets of Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg, neighborhoods with a large numbers of Jewish residents, where they also plan to visit houses of worship and other “critical areas in the community,” de Blasio added on Twitter.

“Anti-Semitism is an attack on the values of our city — and we will confront it head-on,” de Blasio said on Twitter.

The announcement of the increased foot and car patrols comes as the Police Department’s Hates Crimes Task Force investigates eight “alarming” antiSemitic incidents since Dec. 13, police said.

The latest two incidents reported to the authorities happened Friday — both in Crown Heights, police said. Shortly before 7 a.m., an unidentified man walked into the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, approached a member of the Hasidic community and threatened to shoot someone, police said.

Police were still looking for the man who made the threats, who ran east on Eastern Parkway, toward the Crown Heights-Utica Avenue subway station.

Earlier in Crown Heights, a little after midnight, a woman identified as Tiffany Harris, 30, slapped three women in the face, police said.

At a news conference Friday afternoon, Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said Harris admitted to slapping the women because she believed they were Jewish. Harris has been charged with first-degree harassment.

Despite the reports, Crown Heights was humming with pedestrian traffic Friday afternoon, with Hanukkah underway.

David Lahainy, a Torah student at the Chabad Lubavitch headquarters, said he had noticed more police officers in the neighborhood.

“We need more,” said Lahainy, who carried two bouquets of roses from a flower stand that is near a mural of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994 and led the Lubavitch Hasidic community based in Crown Heights.

Anti-Semitic hate crime complaints have increased by 18% this year, according to data provided by the Police Department. The department received 214 antiSemitic hate crime complaints as of Sunday — 32 more than in the same period last year.

“Anti-Semitism is an attack on the values of our city — and we will confront it head-on.”

— New York Mayor Bill de Blasio