Shea: Would’ve been OK to ticket yeshiva

The NYPD would have been within its rights to give a summons to the Brooklyn yeshiva that packed dozens of kids into a classroom in defiance of New York‘s coronavirus lockdown, the city’s top cop said Tuesday.

A summons “would have been appropriate,” said Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, but cops did enough by breaking up the classes and enforcing city guidelines when they showed up at the yeshiva

(top) Monday.

Cops were closely monitoring the Nitra Yeshiva on Madison St. near Ralph Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant to make sure classes don’t resume, Shea said during an interview on NY1.

“We’ll be paying close attention,” Shea (inset) said. “If they do [reopen], a summons will be appropriate and I’ll take it a step further, if the precinct commanding officer gave a summons yesterday, that would have been appropriate as well.”

“Within a short period of time the location was broken up. The most important thing was to correct the condition and that was taken care of,” he said. “We empower our local precinct commanders to make decisions based on the facts, and I think he accomplished what the mission was, which was to make sure people were socially distancing.”

No criminal summonses were issued, but the school was emptied and the students were sent on their way, which achieved the same result, Shea said.

Close to 100 students and faculty were found inside the school Monday afternoon, flouting social-distancing rules during the city’s lockdown — and worried neighbors called 311, officials said.

A cease-and-desist order barring any future gatherings was placed on the property once the building was emptied.

School officials told the NYPD the school had opened for the first time Monday, though witnesses reported seeing children going in and out several times over the last week, the cease-and-desist order filed by the city’s Health Department indicated.

The NYPD has been repeatedly criticized for inconsistent standards when enforcing social-distancing rules. Critics claim police bust up gatherings in white neighborhoods with a warning, while hammering minority communities with summonses and arrests.

Rank-and-file officers have been stepping away from social distancing enforcement over the last several days. Late last week, Mayor de Blasio announced cops wouldn’t crack down on people found not wearing masks, and only focus on large gatherings.

A week earlier, the NYPD had school safety officers to hand out masks to people in city parks and remind them about social-distancing rules.

Shea added to that approach Tuesday, announcing he was going to ask the department’s auxiliary unit, a force of unpaid volunteers, to aid in the city’s social distancing efforts at city parks as well.

The NYPD had suspended its auxiliary unit at the beginning of the pandemic, telling over 4,000 volunteers to stay at home.