Representatives of Mayor Abraham Beame’s office and the city police department promised better police protection for synagogues and other religious institutions, especially on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, after meeting today with a Jewish delegation following a demonstration outside City Hall by some 35 persons led by the Jewish Defense League.
One of the demonstrators, Rabbi Julius Neumann, a former Commissioner of Human Rights for New York City and now a candidate for Councilman in Manhattan, said today that the demonstration was precipitated by the death last Thursday of Arnold Roth, 43, an observant Jew who was attacked in front of his Lower East Side shoe repair shop. Roth, who was active in Jewish, social work, was the latest victim in an ongoing flood of violent crime, vandalism and harassment which has taken place in the New York Jewish community, said Rabbi Neumann.
The City Hall meeting was attended by Joe Erazzo, assistant to Beame, and four representatives of the police department, including Sgt. Edwin Dahlem, the officer in charge of the investigation into Roth’s death. Two JDL members and three other members of the city’s Jewish community, including Rabbi Neumann, also attended.
SEEK ALLOCATION OF MORE FUNDS
The Lower East Side area is one in which a particularly large amount of crimes take place against the Jewish community, said Rabbi Neumann, adding, “We need more police protection in this area.” Police officers “have been taken from” this area “and reassigned to other areas because their residents put pressures on the city government,” he charged.
The demonstrators asked for the allocation of more funds to provide for better police protection in the city and especially on the Lower East Side, as well as the immediate assignment of uniformed or undercover police to areas such as those where Roth was killed. “It is imperative to stop these animals in human form from preying upon people who they think might have a few dollars,” said Rabbi Neumann.
He noted after today’s meeting that a police sergeant from the Lower East Side area assured him he would “keep a closer eye on that section. The area is the scene where two synagogues have been firebombed and put out of commission recently,” the rabbi said. This section of the Lower East Side is included in the area in which Rabbi Neumann is running for Councilman.
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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.
