Community Divides On Hate Crime Severity

by MICHAEL THIER While Queens leaders urge the Jewish community not to panic, recent anti-Semitic acts, including the torching of a Nassau County synagogue and the spray-painting of a residence and temple in Brooklyn, have left the the Jewish community in the borough wary.
Despite the police description of the New York City incidents, and the Los Angeles Jewish community center shooting, as isolated incidents, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) calls for caution and assessment.
"Incidents are not isolated when they are connected by history or shared propaganda," said ADL associate director Ed Sedarbaum.
The recent anti-Semitic wave began with Buford Furrow’s open-firing on a Los Angeles youth center and followed cloesly with Temple Beth Chai in Hauppauge raging in flames Sunday night. Also, swastikas were painted last week on residences in Flatbush and Gramercy Park and a Brooklyn synagogue, leaving Queens straddled by anti-Semitic acts.
Sedarbaum feels that the actions of hate groups outside of Queens will inspire copycat aggressors.
"I’m sure there are people in Queens basements right now, reading propaganda on hate-group websites and feeling as if they are a part of The National Alliance or The World Church of the Creator," he said. "They feel like members and may act on propaganda."
Sedarbaum says the Internet provides the imminent threat. He discussed, but refused to name, websites that cater to children and women.
"Some of these hate sites have kids’ sections with games," he said.
Queens police officials, on the other hand, have yet to uncover any actual threats in the borough.
"We haven’t really received any threats, nothing imminent," said James Tuller, the assistant chief of Patrol Borough Queens North’s. And despite recent swastika sightings, police assert that bias crime fell 19 percent and anti-Semitic crime 31 percent from this point in 1998.
City councilman Sheldon Leffler agreed recent incidents did not equal a heightened climate of anti-Semitism.
"If you take a small period of time, you will always see a statistical distortion," he said. "Jewish people should not believe that there is an increased anti-Semitism in this country. People should not be paranoid that antipathy has increased."
Tuller asks that Jewish institutions that receive threats should maintain an open dialogue with their local precinct and dial 911 immediately if they observe an in-progress or potential hate crime.
However, some synagogues have taken a different route, favoring private security to additional police patrols.
Epic Security president Mark Lerner noticed an increase in his Jewish clientele in the last year or two, however, he said incidents with international implications like the World Trade Center bombing or the Gulf War draws more concern than an anonymous, local act of terrorism.
"People are concerned about [domestic hate groups like] The Order or The Aryan Nation, but they’re not considered terrorist organizations like the Palestinian Liberation Organization," Lerner said. "Plus, police tend to catch these [local] guys."
But police from Brooklyn’s 70th precinct have made no arrests and named no suspects as of yet.
In regards to private security Sedarbaum said, "[Security guards are like] insurance. Everybody needs insurance, but not everyone needs the same amount," he said. "Still, we don’t want to live in armed camps."
In the wake of the incidents, City council speaker Peter Vallone called for a council-funded tolerance center last week to parallel California’s Simon Wiesenthal Center to track local hate groups. Also Vallone will push for increased tolerance curriculum to provide early intervention in city schools and urged Albany to enact Hate Crime legislation. Borough president Claire Shulman joined Vallone in the quest for heightened Hate Crime legislation.
Tuller said the NYPD already tracks bias-motivated incidents but did not discount the need for a tolerance center.