NEW YORK (JTA) – An Orthodox Jewish man is suing the New York Police Department for anti-Semitic harassment that he says compelled him to quit his job as a cop.
David Attali, who has dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship, claims that fellow police officers vandalized his locker with anti-Semitic messages, called him a “dirty Jew,” and greeted him with Heil Hitler salutes and hostile text messages, according to the New York Daily News. He is suing the department, five police officers from his precinct and four supervisors, according to the report.
He requested to transfer out of his World Trade Center police command, but supervisors refused and failed to do anything about the harassment, according to the lawsuit.
Attali, 31 and a six-year veteran of the force, reported the problems to the NYPD’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity last May. The office said that while it could confirm his locker was vandalized, it could not substantiate his allegations of verbal abuse and harassment via text message, the Daily News reported.
Stressed by the harassment, Attali decided to quit the force in August, his lawyer told the newspaper. The lawyer also said that Attali kept evidence of the harassment, including secret audio recordings and logs of offensive text messages.
An NYPD spokeswoman was quoted in the report as saying that any investigation of the incidents is confidential.
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