Hate crimes up in New York City

World Today

NYPD officers and Secret Service agents secure the street at Trump Tower where President-elect Donald Trump’s motorcade is assembled, Tuesday Nov. 22, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

A man who authorities said shouted “go back to your country” at a Muslim woman wearing a religious head covering may have picked the wrong target: a decorated New York City police officer.

CCTV’s John Terrett reports.

Officer Aml Elsokary, a New York City native who joined the force after the Sept. 11 attacks, said she was off duty in her Brooklyn neighborhood Saturday when she encountered a man yelling and pushing her 16-year-old son.

Infographic: Anti-Muslim assaults in the US are at 9/11-era levels | Statista
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When she intervened, she said, the man referenced the Islamic State group and threatened to slit her throat.

It was the first time anything like that had happened to her, she said at a news conference with the city’s mayor Monday.

“I became a police officer to show the positive side of a New Yorker, a Muslim woman, that can do the job,” Elsokary said. “I help everybody, no matter what your religion, what’s your faith, what you do in New York. I’m born and raised here.”

The man accused of making the threat, Christopher Nelson, 36, was arraigned Monday on a felony charge of menacing as a hate crime. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The encounter was one of a number of alleged episodes of religious or racial bigotry reported in the city in recent days.

On Monday, a transit worker who is Muslim was pushed down the stairs at Grand Central Terminal by a man who called her a terrorist, police said. The station agent, who was wearing a religious head covering, was attacked while on her way to work. She was treated at a hospital for ankle and knee injuries.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo also noted in a statement that a subway train was vandalized with swastikas on Saturday, and Ku Klux Klan materials were distributed at Long Island Rail Road stations last week.

The police department cited Elsokary for bravery in 2014 after she and a partner ran into a burning building to save a baby. Police Commissioner James O’Neill recalled visiting Elsokary at the hospital where she and her partner were treated for smoke inhalation.

“You and your partner did a tremendous job that day,” O’Neill told her at Monday’s news conference.

Mayor Bill De Blasio said there are 900 Muslims serving as New York City police officers, on a force of about 36,000.

A report by the New York Police Department says there have been at least 43 hate crime attacks since Election Day, compared to 20 during the same period in 2015–an increase of 115 percent, according to reports.

“In 2014, she ran into a burning building and helped to save a young girl and her grandmother. And, then, on Saturday, she had to experience a man allegedly yelling at her and her son, ‘Go back to your country,'” said de Blasio. “Well this is Officer Elsokary’s country. She is an American. She is a New Yorker. She’s already at home.”

This story has reporting by The Associated Press.


Brian Levin on rising hate crimes in the US

New statics are finding a spike in hate crimes, with a focus on religious and racial bigotry. To learn more of the cause behind this CCTV America’s Elaine Reyes spoke with Brian Levin, professor for the Department of Criminal Justice and director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism.