Police in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn “are doing their utmost to ensure that it will be a comfortable, peaceful summer” following tensions which have been heightened there in recent weeks over incidents between Blacks and Hasidim, according to a police spokesman who spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency following a march Saturday by Black protesters through the Crown Heights neighborhood.
Problems in Crown Heights reached a crescendo because of a firebombing February 26 of a Black woman’s house in the neighborhood, in which a witness claimed to have seen two white men dressed in what looked like Hasidic garb fleeing the scene. The woman whose home was firebombed claimed to have heard them say, “Burn, burn, burn,” before allegedly vanishing into the dormitory of a nearby yeshiva.
Police, the spokesman said, are being educated there on the “ethnic awareness of both groups,” and there is constant communication between the police community affairs department and community clergy and political leaders of Crown Heights, he said.
The local clergy informed their congregants not to participate in Saturday’s march, the spokesman said. The local Hasidic leaders cooperated with the police in ensuring that the masses of Hasidim would not be lined up along the route of the demonstration.
The police were notified of plans for the march over two weeks ago at a church meeting called by a local Black political figure, according to the police spokesman.
MEDIA REPORTS REBUTTED
Jewish spokesmen in the Brooklyn neighborhood that is home to the world headquarters of the Chabad Lubavitch movement rebutted on Sunday recent media accounts of ethnic tensions in their community, which focused on a march on Saturday afternoon of Blacks through the streets of the ethnically mixed neighborhood.
Although the number of protesters in Saturday’s march was estimated to be between 400-500, police said the number varied between 200 and 500 depending on the time of the march. One police spokesman said it was difficult to give an exact number of those joining the protesters, as it kept changing as the marchers swung to different streets and passersby or residents of the houses along the route joined them or left.
The spokesman in the police community affairs department said there is definitely tension in the area on both sides, adding that “the complaints that we get in the police department are exactly the same from both sides of the fence.”
Crown Heights is a racially, ethnically mixed neighborhood where it is estimated that presently about only 10 percent of the neighborhood is Jewish. The Lubavitcher Hasidim have lived in the neighborhood since the early 1940’s, when the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, came there from Europe.
There are also small numbers of other Hasidic groups living in the neighborhood, although the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidim outnumber them in the Jewish community.
Some 2,000 helmeted New York officers lined the route and police helicopter hovered slowly above, as the demonstrators staged a noisy but peaceful march Saturday in response to what they claim is police bias toward the Jewish community.
CHARGES AND COUNTER-CHARGES
Chanting “No Justice, No Peace!” the demonstrators drew attention to a private security patrol run by the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, as well as to the firebombing, but enlarged their claims to embrace a host of issues in the torn Brooklyn community. Among the placards carried was a banner saying “WE Lost, We Lost, We Lost,” referring to the deaths of several Black and Hispanic individuals killed in what they claim are incidents of police aggression.
The Jewish community, on the other hand, has protested the deaths of two Hasidim in what appears to have been ethnically-motivated incidents.
Black anger has been directed at the private security force run by the Lubavitch community, which Blacks claim is a vigilante group. It is composed of only Hasidic members, “Lubavitch-paid, not trained by police, and perform to the best of their ability, sometimes crossing over what might be called the valid legalities,” the police spokesman said.
“They’ve made arrests, held people at times,” the spokesman said, adding that “some have been valid, some have been inappropriate. In this precinct, we have an organized civilian patrol through the police department. We’ve urged the Hasidic patrol to sign up with the police department and patrol their own area. They’d have radio contact with the police. A handful has signed up with police,” he said, “but the majority are independent. They communicate within their own group, telling a resident to call police emergency when necessary. Nobody admits to being armed.”
The march, occurring on Shabbat, stopped briefly at the 770 Eastern Parkway Lubavitch headquarters, where the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, celebrating his 85th birthday, was addressing a crowd reported to number 10,000. The demonstrators were kept a block away from the building. No incidents or arrests were reported.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
