NYC INCREASES POLICING IN JEWISH AREAS AFTER SPATE OF ATTACKS

Two more incidents are reported Friday; 8 noted in two weeks

NEW YORK

The New York Police Department is stepping up patrols in three Brooklyn neighborhoods after a surge of antisemitic crimes reported to the police in the last two weeks, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday.

Police officers are scheduled to patrol the streets of Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg, neighborhoods with a large numbers of Jewish residents, where they also plan to visit houses of worship and other “critical areas in the community,” de Blasio added on Twitter.

“Anti-semitism is an attack on the values of our city — and we will confront it head-on,” de Blasio said on Twitter.

The announcement of the increased foot and car patrols comes as the Police Department’s Hates Crimes Task Force investigates eight “alarming” anti-semitic incidents since Dec. 13, police said.

The latest two incidents reported to authorities happened Friday — both in Crown Heights, police said. Shortly before 7 a.m., an unidentified man walked into the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, approached a member of the Hasidic community and threatened to shoot someone, police said.

Police were still looking for the man who made the threats, who ran east on Eastern Parkway, toward the Crown Heights-utica Avenue subway station.

Earlier in Crown Heights, a little after midnight, a woman identified as Tiffany Harris, 30, slapped three women in the face, police said.

At a news conference Friday afternoon, Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said Harris admitted to slapping the women because she believed they were Jewish. Harris has been charged with first-degree harassment.

Anti-semitic hate crime complaints have increased by 18 percent this year, according to data provided by the Police Department. The department received 214 anti-semitic hate crime complaints as of Sunday — 32 more than in the same period last year.

“We take every one seriously, whether it’s one or eight,” Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea said at a news conference Friday. “I would argue that one is too much.”

Salcedo and Piccoli write for The New York Times.