May 17–23, 2019 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 AWP 5
Brooklyn bigots
String of senseless hate crimes have left
Williamsburg Jews in fear of attack
Pleading for more preservation
Sunset Parkers asking for four more historic districts
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By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
Williamsburg Jews suffered
a string of senseless
attacks earlier this month,
leaving members of the neighborhood’s
Orthodox Jewish
community fearing for their
safety, according to a local
rabbi.
“People merely walking on
the streets here feel like sitting
ducks, worrying that they must
look over their shoulder in fear
of being hurt because of their
faith,” said Rabbi David Niederman,
executive director of
the United Jewish Organization
of Williamsburg.
A group of men attacked a
42-year-old man wearing religious
garb on Lynch Street
near Broadway at 1:15 p.m.
on May 4, shouting anti-Semitic
slurs, before socking
him in the face, according
to police.
Cops are hunting these men for attacking a Jewish
man in Williamsburg on May 4.
Three days later, a teenager
snuck up behind an Orthodox
Jewish man on Marcy Avenue
near Rodney Street on May 7,
when he punched the man, before
fleeing, cops said.
Police arrested a 16-yearold
boy in connection with
the May 7 attack Wednesday
morning, charging with
him assault as a hate crime,
according to police.
Both attacks come at a
time when hate crimes citywide
are soaring, with 145 hate
crimes reported between Jan.
1 and April 30, a 67 percent
increase over the 87 reported
hate crimes reported during
the same period in 2018.
Of those, more than half targeted
Jews in the first quarter
of both 2018 and 2019, with
82 attacks against Jewish New
Yorker’s this year alone.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo condemned
the attacks, and offered
the NYPD’s Hate Crimes
Task Force state resources to
help track down the culprits.
“This abhorrent act of hatefueled
violence is deeply disturbing,
especially in the wake
of a reported spike in hate
crimes and anti-Semitic incidents
over the past year,”
Cuomo said.
The rise in hate crimes occurs
during an outbreak of the
deadly measles virus in Brooklyn,
which has largely been
confined to Williasmburg’s
Orthodox Jewish community,
and has infected more than 460
people borough-wide.
In April , a Jewish man accused
an MTA bus driver of
attempting to refuse him service
on the B57 line in Williamsburg,
and then shouting
about the measles after
he was able to run down and
board the bus.
By Julianne McShane
Brooklyn Paper
Call it history in the making.
The city Landmarks Preservation
Commission must
designate four historic districts
in Sunset Park in order
to protect the area from future
development that could forever
alter its character, a local
pol and a slew of his constituents
claimed at a May 7
public hearing hosted by the
landmarks agency.
Councilman Carlos
Menchaca (D–Sunset Park)
and nearly two dozen Sunset
Parkers testified in favor of
the designations at the May 7
hearing at the commission’s
headquarters on the distant
isle of Manhattan. The hearing
marked the last step of
the formal designation process
before the commission takes
its vote on the designations at
an as-yet-unscheduled public
meeting, which city law mandates
must take place within
two years of a vote to calendar
any proposed enclaves,
according to spokeswoman
Zodet Negron.
The move to designate
the historic districts would
forever preserve the more
than 500 buildings that are
located in the proposed districts,
which include:
• 44th Street between Fifth
and Seventh avenues;
• 46th, 47th, and 48th streets
between Fifth and Sixth avenues,
plus the Sixth Avenue–
facing blocks between 47th
and 49th streets;
• 50th Street between
Fourth and Fifth avenues;
• and 54th, 55th, 56th, 57th,
58th, and 59th streets between
Fourth and Fifth avenues.
The areas contain a mix of
wood, stone, and brick structures,
as well as row houses
built between the late 19th
and early 20th centuries,
which represent the neighborhood’s
“primary periods
of development and building
typologies,” according
to Kate Lemos McHale,
the agency’s director of research.
The move to designate the historic area would forever
preserve the more than 500 buildings that are
located in the proposed four districts.
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