Posted on 06/11/2002 5:47:16 AM PDT by SJackson
NEW YORK - New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the use of armed patrols to protect Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn was simply out of the question.
"The department will not tolerate anyone brandishing weapons under the guise of protecting others," Kelly said in a statement Monday. "Anyone attempting to patrol the streets armed with weapons will be arrested."
Kelly's statement came in response to a proposal made Sunday by Rabbi Yakove Lloyd, president of the right-wing Jewish Defense Group, that citizens armed with shotguns patrol the heavily Jewish Borough Park and southern Flatbush neighborhoods of Brooklyn because of comments a suspected terrorist made about targeting them.
Lloyd had said the patrols of 50 to 200 people would carry shotguns in bags, along with people licensed to own and carry other types of firearms. Others would carry bats, pipes, cell phones and walkie-talkies. The patrols were to start on June 16.
"Any move in this direction is counterproductive," Kelly later added at a press conference in Queens. "The tenor of this is wrong. We don't need this."
Lloyd did not immediately return a call for comment on Monday.
Several other leaders in the Jewish community have lined up to criticize the plan.
Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district includes Borough Park, called the idea outrageous.
"Don't think of coming into our neighborhoods to stir up trouble," he said "We don't want you and we don't need you."
"We don't believe in vigilantism," Daniel Botnick, director of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council said Monday. "It's not only shortsighted, it's irresponsible."
Botnick said the heavily Jewish areas of Crown Heights have a civilian patrol, but they are unarmed.
Lloyd's idea was in response to the comments that Abdul Rahman Yasin made during an interview on CBS television's "60 Minutes" on June 2.
Yasin, who is sought by the FBI in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, said in the interview from a compound in Iraq that he and his accomplices originally targeted heavily Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. They later decided to attack the twin towers because they believed most of their occupants were Jewish, Yasin said.
Six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured in the bombing.
The Jewish Defense Group was founded by Lloyd in Queens in 1985, and follows the principles of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the right-wing Jewish Defense League.
"The department will not tolerate anyone brandishing weapons under the guise of protecting others," The worst offense, in the liberal mind, is being able to rely on something or someone other than "The Government". Such reliance is a formula for disaster. "The Government" needs victims in order to place more restrictions on their subjects.
Here's hoping the Jews of New York have the backbone to stand, armed, and defend themselves instead of depending on this horsesa$$.
Boonie Rat
MACV SOCOM, PhuBai/Hue '65-'66
I think you're looking at two reasons. First, it's a disproportionate urban population, thus not the contact with firearms that non urban residents have. Second, for many in America there hasn’t been a perceived threat to the Jewish community. Many don’t see it now.
I’d also suggest that on FR most posters take a strong constitutional 2nd Amendment and self defense stand, that is probably a minority view even amongst Republicans. I’m constantly amazed at the number of hunters and fisherman who have no concerns about “assault weapon bans”, and who regularly vote Dem.
Ray Kelly is back in town. He was the police chief that allowed the "venting" during the Crown Heights anti-Jewish riots.
Of course it is wrong. We can not allow any ethnic or social group to band together in the common defense. All must be sheep unless you are a Black Panther then it is politically correct (Jews are not the acceptable minority). The tenor of self defense is also wrong as it inspires people to resist slavery or, as in the case of the Jews, extermination. No, we (the power elite) don't need this. Reduction of crime through self help might inspire mass resistance to government property taking, school board lunacy, unjust taxes or you name the outrage. Of course we don't need this.
Actually, that would be Lee "Get out of Town" Brown, now the Mayor of Houston. Kelly was, however, in the police bureaucracy at the time and later suceeded Brown as Commish after the Crown Heights pogrom.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
You can't protect yourself.
We will however, show up after you are dead and conduct a cursory investigation. On the five percent chance your murderer wanders into a police station drunk and is accidentally caught, we promise to plea bargain him to a sentence of no less than one year and five months, with time off for good behavior.
The same NYPD we honor for their valor on 9/11. Different hats. Concealed carry has swept the nation in the last decade. Though my time is spent in two of the unswept states, this isn't a time for disobedience. I think the logic of armed citizens is carrying the day. Disobedience plays into the gunowners as crazies myth.
In saying that, I realize that like New Yorkers it will be years for me, but we're moving in the right direction.
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