Police in Suffolk County, which is believed to have the nation’s highest arrest rate of anti-Semitic vandals, say they are being hampered by Jews who refuse to press charges, it was reported this week by the Jewish World of Long Island.
“We keep running into Jews who refuse to sign complaints because they ‘don’t want to get in volved,'” said Suffolk County Police Detective Howard Mondell. “They don’t want to have to spend a few hours in court to see justice done.”
Mandell, who heads the county police task force on anti-Semitism, said that in one recent incident, four girls walking to the Dix Hills Jewish Center were harassed by a gong of boys, one of whom yelled “Heil Hitler” and pointed a rifle at them. “But we could not press charges because the parents refused to let the girls file a complaint,” Mondell said, adding:
“Jews must stand up and demand respect and a response from their government. if they sit back and say that anti-Semitism has always been there and will continue to be here, nothing will change.” As a result of prompt police response to complaints lodged with them, Mandell said, Suffolk was the only county in the New York metropolitan area to report a 30 percent decline in anti-Semitic incidents between 1980 and 1981. During the same period in adjoining Nassau County — where he said local judges were “benevolent” — anti-Semitic incidents increased by 50 percent. “You can’t be nice to bigots,” Mandell said. “If you try to reason with a bigot, he perceives it as a sign of weakness”
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