To their shock and horror, Ridgewood residents discovered hundreds of anti-Semitic flyers scattered around the Halsey Street L station on Wednesday evening.
The flyers strewn across Norman Street interposed the phrase “worthless f**king cancer filled Jew” onto a black and white aerial shot of a man wearing a kippah with the star of David on top.
This summer, hate crime incidents have continued to spike across New York City. It is the second anti-Semitic act of vandalism in the greater Ridgewood area in just over a month. In July, someone smeared a swastika in what appeared to excrement at a bus stop at Cypress Hills Street and Myrtle Avenue.
An intentionally distorted version of the flier appears below, linked to the actual flier which features the offensive content (viewer discretion strongly advised):
Drew, a nearby resident who asked not reveal his full name for fear of retaliation, said that he discovered the flyers around 4:30 p.m. and tried to pick them all up and throw them out.
“There are very ignorant hate-filled people out there to put in such effort to make a flyer like this. Someone actually went into some sort editing program and spent time designing this flyer, which is really horrifying,” he said.
According to police sources, a 56-year-old man came to the 104th Precinct around 8:30 p.m. with a copy of the flyer and filed a harassment complaint.
Drew also said that he saw police officers monitoring the train stop around 7:30 p.m. Police notified the Hate Crimes Task Force about the incident. The investigation is ongoing.
