Kelly Sees Copycat In Latest Bias Incident
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A string of new hate crimes has contributed to an unusual spike in bias incidents over the past month.
In the most recent incident, police said swastikas were found outside a Queens synagogue yesterday, a day after the Nazi symbol and phrases lauding Adolf Hitler were found scrawled inside a Lower Manhattan high school. Also this week, police were questioning a group of white men in what may have been a race-fueled attack against a young black man in Staten Island. Police said the companions of the first assailant kicked the victim after he had fallen to the ground, and that the victim’s jaw had been broken.
In the latest incident, swastikas were found scrawled on a volunteer Hatzolah ambulance and a bulletin board outside of a synagogue in Hillcrest, Queens, at 6:45 a.m. yesterday.
“It’s a horrible thing to come in to work and see,” a shaken woman who answered the phone at the Young Israel of Hillcrest synagogue said. She declined to give her name.
The police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, called the swastikas copycats of an incident a few weeks ago in which 23 anti-Semitic markings were found scattered through Brooklyn Heights. Several hangman’s nooses have also been found, the first in more than five years.
“The copycat syndrome is in full bloom,” Mr. Kelly said at a midmorning news conference. Mr. Kelly said police were investigating anti-Semitic chalk markings discovered by a school librarian at Murray Bergtraum High School, a business magnet school located in the shadow of 1 Police Plaza.
Police were also questioning four men involved in the beating of a 20-year-old black man in Staten Island. The attack was reminiscent of a race-infused attack in Howard Beach in 2005 in which a white man, Nicholas Minucci, was convicted of beating a black man with a baseball bat while calling him racial epithets. In the most recent incident, the victim leaned briefly against the hood of a silver Cadillac after racing a white friend down the street.
After walking away, police said he was followed by the group of white men, one of whom brandished a bat. The Cadillac’s driver then made a racist comment and punched the victim in the jaw, police said.
