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Rabbi suspends armed patrols (Followup)
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Rabbi suspends armed patrols after NYC lawmakers, residents complain
Sun Jun 16, 8:54 PM ET
By TED SHAFFREY, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - A right-wing rabbi suspended plans to organize armed civilian patrols in heavily Jewish neighborhoods that were considered terror targets after angry residents and lawmakers complained.
"The response was so overwhelmingly negative, but God forbid anything should happen and then I'll have to say, `I told you so,'" the rabbi, Yakove Lloyd, said Sunday. "This is not forever; it may be just for a week or so."
Lloyd, president of the right-wing Jewish Defense Group, had called a press conference to explain details on his armed patrols with groups carrying shotguns, baseball bats, pipes, cellular phones and walkie-talkies. The patrols had been scheduled to begin Sunday night in Borough Park and Flatbush.
He promised a crowd of 100 supporters but showed up alone.
"You are here to take advantage of our community. Go back home. We will fight against you," state Assemblyman Dov Hikind said Sunday. His district includes Borough Park, one of the Brooklyn neighborhoods that would be patrolled by the armed groups. Lloyd is from Queens.
Lloyd was shouted at by Hikind, Brooklyn Councilman Simcha Felder and a few dozen members of the shomrin, a community group that patrols neighborhoods with cellular phones.
"When you get people like Lloyd in the community ... it gives us all a bad name, and it gives someone who wants to attack the community an open hand," said Abe Weinreb, a shomrin member.
Lloyd said the armed patrols were conceived in response to comments that fugitive Abdul Rahman Yasin made during an interview on CBS television's "60 Minutes" on June 2.
"We're not here to hurt anybody," he said Sunday. "I ... heard Yasin say the original (Trade Center) targets were Jews in Brooklyn, so I was concerned and I was nervous for my people."
Yasin, who is sought by the FBI ( news - web sites) in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, said from 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 occupants were Jewish, Yasin said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last week that armed vigilantes would be arrested.
Lloyd said his patrol members had the proper gun licenses.
"We are allowed to carry firearms if we have permits and licenses," Lloyd said Sunday.
The Jewish Defense Group was founded by Lloyd in 1985, and follows the principles of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the right-wing Jewish Defense League.
In January, JDL chairman Irv Rubin and a group member were charged with conspiring to blow up a mosque and the office of an Arab-American congressman in California. They have pleaded innocent.
Kahane was assassinated by an Islamic extremist at a New York ballroom in 1990.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020617/ap_wo_en_po/us_armed_patrols_2
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Sun Jun 16, 8:54 PM ET
By TED SHAFFREY, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - A right-wing rabbi suspended plans to organize armed civilian patrols in heavily Jewish neighborhoods that were considered terror targets after angry residents and lawmakers complained.
"The response was so overwhelmingly negative, but God forbid anything should happen and then I'll have to say, `I told you so,'" the rabbi, Yakove Lloyd, said Sunday. "This is not forever; it may be just for a week or so."
Lloyd, president of the right-wing Jewish Defense Group, had called a press conference to explain details on his armed patrols with groups carrying shotguns, baseball bats, pipes, cellular phones and walkie-talkies. The patrols had been scheduled to begin Sunday night in Borough Park and Flatbush.
He promised a crowd of 100 supporters but showed up alone.
"You are here to take advantage of our community. Go back home. We will fight against you," state Assemblyman Dov Hikind said Sunday. His district includes Borough Park, one of the Brooklyn neighborhoods that would be patrolled by the armed groups. Lloyd is from Queens.
Lloyd was shouted at by Hikind, Brooklyn Councilman Simcha Felder and a few dozen members of the shomrin, a community group that patrols neighborhoods with cellular phones.
"When you get people like Lloyd in the community ... it gives us all a bad name, and it gives someone who wants to attack the community an open hand," said Abe Weinreb, a shomrin member.
Lloyd said the armed patrols were conceived in response to comments that fugitive Abdul Rahman Yasin made during an interview on CBS television's "60 Minutes" on June 2.
"We're not here to hurt anybody," he said Sunday. "I ... heard Yasin say the original (Trade Center) targets were Jews in Brooklyn, so I was concerned and I was nervous for my people."
Yasin, who is sought by the FBI ( news - web sites) in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, said from 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 occupants were Jewish, Yasin said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last week that armed vigilantes would be arrested.
Lloyd said his patrol members had the proper gun licenses.
"We are allowed to carry firearms if we have permits and licenses," Lloyd said Sunday.
The Jewish Defense Group was founded by Lloyd in 1985, and follows the principles of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the right-wing Jewish Defense League.
In January, JDL chairman Irv Rubin and a group member were charged with conspiring to blow up a mosque and the office of an Arab-American congressman in California. They have pleaded innocent.
Kahane was assassinated by an Islamic extremist at a New York ballroom in 1990.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020617/ap_wo_en_po/us_armed_patrols_2
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878