Members of Brooklyn’s Hasidic community has protested a decision by the New York Police Department to to treat what they deem to be an antisemitic hate crime merely as an attempted robbery.
Police are investigating an attack on a Hasidic Jewish man in Williamsburg at 22:40 on Thursday, 15th October as an attempted robbery.
Surveillance video footage shows two individuals approaching the victim, chasing him, beating him and trying to steal his bag. The victim’s face was injured but he managed to hold on to his belongings. The suspects – two men in their twenties, according to police – fled the scene empty-handed.
Former NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a vocal communal activist, reportedly described the attack as a hate crime, while two eye-witnesses who spoke to CBS News claimed that the attack was sparked by antisemitic hatred.
One of the eye-witnesses, however, conceded that robbery might have been an “additional” motive as the area was “not the best.”
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