Tyler Pager

The man, who was not wearing pants or underwear, displayed a knife before he was shot in the arm near the intersection of 215th Street and Northern Boulevard, close to the 111th Precinct in Bayside, police said.

He was taken to a hospital and is expected to survive, police said.

At least one police officer was also taken to a hospital to be evaluated for minor injuries.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/nyregion/bayside-queens-police-shooting.html" id="8937e2d0-dad7-35ef-a58d-8123e07f908d">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — A New York police officer shot a man Sunday afternoon as he was setting a car on fire outside a police precinct in Queens, police said.

Officer Shoots a Knife-Wielding Man Who Was Setting a Car on Fire, Police Say

“It is our belief that there is no greater threat to public health than vaccines,” the publication concludes, contradicting the scientific consensus that vaccines are generally safe and highly effective.

The handbook, created by a group called Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health, or PEACH, is targeted at ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose expanding and insular communities are at the epicenter of one of the largest measles outbreaks in the United States in decades.

On Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a public health emergency in parts of Brooklyn in an effort to contain the spread of measles in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods there. He said unvaccinated individuals would be required to receive the measles vaccine — or be subjected to a fine — as the city escalated its campaign to stem the outbreak.

PEACH’s handbook — with letters signed by rabbis and sections like “Halachic Points of Interest” — has become one of the main vehicles for misinformation among ultra-Orthodox groups, including Hasidim. Its message is being shared on hotlines and in group text messages.

“Vaccines contain monkey, rat and pig DNA as well as cow-serum blood, all of which are forbidden for consumption according to kosher dietary law,” Moishe Kahan, a contributing editor for PEACH magazine, said in an email.

Vaccines are often grown in a broth of animal cells, but the final product is highly purified. Most prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis agree that vaccines are kosher, and urge observant Jews to be immunized.

Still, from enclaves in suburban Rockland County to the bustling streets of Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood, flyers tell the Hasidim to be skeptical of immunizations. On a recent Sunday evening, a four-hour conference call promoted to ultra-Orthodox families — with call-in numbers for a variety of countries — offered advice from speakers who were presented as experts in vaccine science.

The anti-vaccine movement goes beyond the confines of the ultra-Orthodox community. There are thriving and growing hot spots of vaccines opponents across the country that span ideological boundaries: In Seattle, some liberal communities shun vaccinations, and conservative populations in states like Texas also oppose them.

In New York’s ultra-Orthodox community, the anti-vaccine movement has no clear public leader. Jewish leaders have said its message has spread through grassroots activism and has found a foothold largely because many Hasidim have limited access to the internet or rigorous scientific research.

The majority of ultra-Orthodox Jews emphatically say they would never go against the advice of doctors, and health officials say most Hasidim are vaccinated. “I don’t understand anyone that doesn’t vaccinate,” Abe Kornbluh said as he stood at the front of Bleu, his restaurant on 13th Avenue in Borough Park.

But there have been dozens of sick children whose parents have hid their measles diagnoses from the public. And as public officials have scrambled to curtail the highly contagious disease, groups like PEACH, whose members are mostly anonymous and are supported by national anti-vaccine organizations, have only intensified their messaging.

Many of the vaccine skeptics cloak their rhetoric with scientific language, as did the speakers on the recent conference call.

The call, which was advertised on flyers and accessible to anyone with the call-in number, told participants its goal was to “create an intelligent discussion about what we are putting into our children.” It featured speakers who were rabbis, doctors and lawyers, all of whom touted postgraduate degrees as they downplayed the dangers of measles and questioned the efficacy of vaccines.

A Hasidic mother who lives in Rockland County and participated in the call told The New York Times that none of her three children were vaccinated, and all of them recently had measles. The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said that she did not report the cases to doctors and that the children recovered in a matter of days.

“The body is not a machine,” she said. “The body is something that reacts to toxins in certain ways. I’ve heard firsthand of cases of SIDS after children getting a vaccine,” she added, referring to sudden infant death syndrome. Many studies have concluded that vaccines do not cause SIDS.

The measles outbreak began in New York in October, after ultra-Orthodox Jews had returned from Israel where they were celebrating Sukkot, a Jewish harvest festival. They had prayed at the Western Wall, eaten in sukkahs and vacationed in the warm weather.

But Israel was in the midst of a monthslong outbreak, and health officials have said that several unvaccinated children came home with the virus.

As doctors confirmed the first cases in New York, health officials and Jewish leaders rushed to stop the spread of the disease, which the United States had declared eradicated in 2000.

Flyers that emphasized the importance of vaccinations were dispersed. Health experts organized meetings with Jewish pediatricians, and thousands of doses of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine were dispensed.

The majority of ultra-Orthodox rabbis said they, too, urged vaccination, citing religious scripture about protecting one’s health and the health of others.

But all of that has not been enough to persuade vaccine skeptics.

Yosef Rapaport, a Hasidic journalist in Borough Park who has written about the importance of vaccination, said parents who do not want to immunize their children will seek rabbinical counsel that aligns with their views.

“You make up your mind and then try to find the interpretation in the Talmud,” he said. “You can always find some rabbi who will express doubt.”

Dr. Aaron Glatt, an infectious disease specialist who is also an ordained rabbi on Long Island, says he has explicitly pushed back on misinformation about the dangers of vaccines.

He has emphasized to his patients and congregants that measles is spread by the unvaccinated and can be deadly, especially for infants under 6 months old and people with compromised immune systems, who cannot get vaccines.

“Unfortunately, we are not immune to anti-vax people,” Glatt said. “They’re found in every community, in every religion, and unfortunately, they’re vocal.”

Dr. Yakov Kiffel, a pediatrician in Monsey in Rockland County, said that he has both vaccinated children and treated about a half-dozen patients with measles since the fall. He said the majority of the sick were under 6 months old — the age at which a child can be given the first dose of the MMR vaccine — and members of families that said they vaccinate.

More than 400 measles cases have been confirmed in New York since October, and the majority of them have been among Hasidim.

In the past week, according to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 60 new cases reported in New York City. Nine new cases were confirmed in Rockland County, which last month took the extraordinary step of barring children who were not vaccinated against measles from public places. A judge ruled against the order Friday, temporarily lifting the ban.

In the city, officials have prohibited unvaccinated children from attending schools in certain ZIP codes, predominantly in Williamsburg and Borough Park — an effort that has met mixed success.

Some Hasidim have said that long-standing tension between members of the ultra-Orthodox community and the government have made them wary of officials’ efforts to contain the outbreak.

The past persecution of the Jewish people is still a factor, they said. And more recently, quarrels with secular leaders over a circumcision ritual that has transmitted fatal herpes infections to infants and the government’s oversight of ultra-Orthodox Jewish private schools known as yeshivas have only soured relations.

Some Hasidic parents also blame the absence of science education in yeshivas.

“The lack of a comprehensive secular education has raised a generation of some parents who do not appreciate modern science and do not have trust in the health system,” said Dov Bleich, a Hasidic father of two who lives in Monsey, and emphasized that most rabbis are supportive of vaccines.

“It’s leaving them vulnerable to the anti-vaccine crusade.”

Blima Marcus, a nurse practitioner at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, is one of the many health care providers trying to counter that crusade.

Marcus, the former president of the Orthodox Jewish Nurses Association, said her work began last fall, after a relative included her in a text message with nearly 40 ultra-Orthodox mothers in Lakewood, New Jersey.

The majority of the women had not vaccinated their children, she said, but many began to reconsider that decision once she presented them with facts.

But Marcus acknowledged that her efforts are too limited to have a significant impact on the outbreak.

On Friday, rabbis met in Brooklyn to consider a proposal that would require all Hasidim to be vaccinated in order to attend synagogues and yeshivas. After the meeting, anti-vaccine organizers sent a robocall to Hasidic homes, urging people to persuade their rabbis not to support the measure.

Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine, said people often do not understand the severity of diseases that have been eradicated by vaccines.

“Vaccines have been a victim of their own success,” Offit said.

“What upsets me is we haven’t learned from history,” he added. “What history teaches us is that measles is a killer, and vaccines can eliminate this killer, but now because of our ignorance, we have to see children suffer.”

Still, opponents of vaccination ardently maintain that diseases like measles are not dangerous.

“The adverse events from getting measles, they’re very, very, very low,” Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, a pediatrician in New York, said on the recent conference call. There have been no reported deaths in New York state linked to the recent outbreak. But measles killed 110,000 people globally in 2017, according to the World Health Organization.

In New York, people like Shoshana Bernstein, a Hasidic mother in Monsey, worry about the potentially deadly consequences of listening to anti-vaccine proponents like Palevsky.

“A basic Jewish tenet that every Jewish child is raised on, is love your friend like yourself,” Bernstein said. “This is woven into the very fabric of who we are, which is why the current situation is extremely frustrating because it is the complete opposite of our essence as Jewish people.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/nyregion/jews-measles-vaccination.html" id="1d7c3fc7-bc62-32f5-a250-88574235878c">The New York Times</a>.

'Monkey, Rat and Pig DNA': How Misinformation Is Driving the Measles Outbreak Among Ultra-Orthodox Jews

NEW YORK — “The Vaccine Safety Handbook” appears innocuous, a slick magazine for parents who want to raise healthy children. But tucked inside its 40 pages are false warnings that vaccines cause autism and contain cells from aborted human fetuses.

On Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a public health emergency in parts of Brooklyn in an effort to contain the spread of measles in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods there. He said unvaccinated individuals would be required to receive the measles vaccine as the city escalated its campaign to stem the outbreak.

PEACH’s handbook — with letters signed by rabbis and sections like “Halachic Points of Interest” — has become one of the main vehicles for misinformation among ultra-Orthodox groups, known as Hasidim. Its message is being shared on hotlines and in group text messages.

The conference call, which was advertised on flyers and accessible to anyone with the call-in number, told participants its goal was to “create an intelligent discussion about what we are putting into our children.” It featured speakers who were rabbis, doctors and lawyers, all of whom touted postgraduate degrees and downplayed the dangers of measles and questioned the efficacy of vaccines.

Dr. Yakov Kiffel, a pediatrician in Monsey in Rockland County, said that this fall he has both vaccinated children and treated about a half-dozen patients with measles. He said the majority of the sick were under 6 months old — the age at which a child can be given the first dose of the MMR vaccine — and members of families that said they vaccinate.

“The adverse events from getting measles, they’re very, very, very low,” Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, a pediatrician in New York, said on the recent conference call. There have been no reported deaths in New York City linked to the recent outbreak. But measles killed 110,000 people globally in 2017, according to the World Health Organization.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would require unvaccinated individuals living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to receive the measles vaccine as the city escalated its efforts to stem one of the largest measles outbreaks in decades.

The mayor said the city would issue violations and possibly fines of $1,000 for those who did not comply.

“This is the epicenter of a measles outbreak that is very, very troubling and must be dealt with immediately,” de Blasio said at a news conference in Williamsburg, adding, “The measles vaccine works. It is safe; it is effective; it is time-tested.”

The measure follows a spike in measles infections in New York City, where there have been 285 confirmed cases since the outbreak began in the fall; 21 of those cases led to hospitalizations, including five admissions to the intensive care unit. The majority of the cases have been concentrated in Hasidic communities in Williamsburg and Borough Park, Brooklyn.

Across the country, there have been 465 measles cases since the start of 2019, with 78 new cases in the last week alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

In 2018, New York and New Jersey accounted for more than half the measles cases in the country, and the continuing outbreak has led to unusual measures.

In Rockland County, New York, a northern suburb of New York City, county health officials last month barred unvaccinated children from public places for 30 days. However, last week a judge ruled against the order, temporarily halting it.

And in New York City, an emergency health order issued in December called on students who were not vaccinated against measles to be prohibited from attending classes in ultra-Orthodox schools in selected ZIP codes.

City officials conceded that the earlier order was not effective; de Blasio said Tuesday that the city would fine or even temporarily shut down yeshivas that did not abide by the measure.

To enforce the order, health officials said they would check the vaccination records of any individuals who were in contact with people infected with measles.

“The point here is not to fine people but to make it easier for them to get vaccinated,” Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the city’s health commissioner, said at the news conference.

Despite the legal challenge to Rockland County’s efforts, de Blasio said the city had consulted its lawyers and felt confident it was within their power to mandate vaccinations.

“We are absolutely certain we have the power to do this,” de Blasio said. “This is a public health emergency.”

Dr. Paul Offit, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said there was precedent for de Blasio’s actions, pointing to a massive measles outbreak in Philadelphia in 1991. During that outbreak, officials in that city went even further, getting a court order to force parents to vaccinate their children.

“I think he’s doing the right thing,” Offit said about de Blasio. “He’s trying to protect the children and the people of the city.”

He added: “I don’t think it’s your unalienable right as a United States citizen to allow your child to catch and transmit a potentially fatal infection.”

Health officials, noting that Passover will begin next week, were concerned that measles could spread at family gatherings here or abroad.

“The outbreak could in fact especially spread because soon it will be Pesach,” the mayor said. “There will be school vacation. There will be more and more families together. The last thing we want to see is more family members afflicted by this disease.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/nyregion/measles-vaccination-williamsburg.html" id="d362594c-26c1-3f04-a90a-78b46bd32841">The New York Times</a>.

Measles Outbreak: New York Declares Health Emergency, Requires Vaccinations in Parts of Brooklyn

NEW YORK — New York City on Tuesday declared a public health emergency following a measles outbreak in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn.

Health officials, noting that Passover will begin next week, were concerned measles could spread at family gatherings here or abroad.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city would require unvaccinated individuals living in select ZIP codes in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to receive the measles vaccine as the city escalated its efforts to stem one of the largest measles outbreaks in decades.

The mayor said that the city would issue violations and possibly fines for those who did not comply.

“This is the epicenter of a measles outbreak that is very, very troubling and must be dealt with immediately,” de Blasio said at a news conference in Williamsburg, adding, “The measles vaccine works. It is safe, it is effective, it is time-tested.”

The measure follows a spike in measles cases in New York City, where there have been 285 confirmed cases since the outbreak began in the fall; 21 of those cases led to hospitalizations, including five admissions to the intensive care unit. The majority of the cases have been concentrated in Hasidic communities in Williamsburg and Borough Park, Brooklyn.

NEW YORK — New York City on Tuesday declared a public health emergency following a measles outbreak in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.

Measles Outbreak: De Blasio Declares Emergency in Parts of Brooklyn, Requiring Vaccinations

NEW YORK — New York City on Tuesday declared a public health emergency following a measles outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.

Judge Gray H. Miller of U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Texas took note of the Supreme Court’s 1981 ruling that the exclusion of women from the draft was “fully justified” because women then were not allowed to serve in combat. But the Pentagon abolished those restrictions in 2015, opening the way for women to serve in any military role for which they could qualify.

“While historical restrictions on women in the military may have justified past discrimination, men and women are now ‘similarly situated for purposes of a draft or registration for a draft,'” Miller wrote in his ruling. “If there ever was a time to discuss ‘the place of women in the Armed Services,’ that time has passed.”

Though no one has been conscripted into the U.S. military in more than 40 years, the Military Selective Service Act requires all American men to register when they turn 18, in case a draft is reinstated; they remain eligible through age 25. Men who do not register can be fined, imprisoned and denied services like federal student loans.

The ruling came in a case brought by the National Coalition for Men, a men’s rights group, which argued that drafting men exclusively violates the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause.

The men’s rights group that brought the suit welcomed the ruling. “We think it’s about time since women are allowed in combat,” Marc E. Angelucci, a lawyer for the National Coalition for Men, said. “If we have draft registration, both sexes should have to register. There’s really no more excuse to require only men to register.”

The Pentagon declined to comment Sunday.

Miller’s ruling was declaratory, and it did not specify any action that the government must take to comply.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/24/us/military-draft-men-unconstitutional.html" id="547c4b3e-1986-30ab-ae13-df649c20b023">The New York Times</a>.

A military draft that applies only to men is unconstitutional, a federal judge in Houston has ruled, saying that excluding women is no longer justified because they can now serve in combat roles just as men do.

Drafting Only Men for the Military Is Unconstitutional, Judge Rules

Though the thrust of Cuomo’s speech pushed for congestion pricing, he took particular aim at the transit authority for its decision-making related to cleaning subway stations.

“My favorite MTA decision — because you have to laugh, otherwise you cry — is the one they made to pick a product to clean the subway stations,” Cuomo said Thursday, accompanied by a photoshopped image of a man cleaning the floor of a subway station. “What product did they pick? Tide. Yes, the same Tide detergent you use at home to wash your clothes. If it’s got to be clean, it’s got to be Tide.”

Cuomo’s criticism, however, did not seem to register with some riders. The New York Times spoke to nearly two dozen riders Sunday, none of whom were aware of Cuomo’s comments.

But most agreed about the state of the subways: They are filthy, and it does not matter how they are cleaned. Riders just want to see improvements.

“It’s pretty gross,” William Sit, 32, said. “It’s not uncommon to have puke on the floor or even on the train as a smell.”

Standing on the platform for the Q train at the 72nd Street Station, Sit, a Brooklyn resident, said the cleanliness of stations varies drastically. The newer stations, like one at 72nd Street that opened twoyears ago, are cleaner.

“It’s not getting better,” said Cynthia Morgan, a 66-year-old from New Rochelle, New York, and was waiting for the shuttle at Times Square. “It’s a daily experience.”

While MTA officials did not directly address Cuomo’s criticism, they did acknowledge that too many stations are “unacceptably dirty,” and said the MTA is taking steps to address it.

“It was clear that the old methods simply weren’t working, and this new, different and urgent approach will provide our customers with the service and experience they deserve,” Maxwell Young, a spokesman for the MTA, said in a statement.

In January, the MTA, as part of the Subway Action Plan to improve the system, allocated funds for a one-time effort to clean and refurbish 100 stations and up to 3,000 cars. The MTA spent $9.5 million on outside contractors to perform the work.

“The fact that the MTA is using Tide to clean the subways punctuates the point that a fundamental overhaul in approach and management is needed,” Patrick Muncie, a spokesman for Cuomo, said in a statement.

A spokesman for the MTA said Tide was used before the new cleaning initiatives.

Riders seemed concerned whether the subways could be kept clean as a result of the large number of homeless riders.

Several said they have noticed an increase in the number of people sleeping on the trains. The subway has long been a refuge for homeless people looking to stay warm during the winter months.

“The smell of the homeless — it’s very sad,” said Martha Carrillo, 66, of Queens, who expressed sympathy for their condition but said people who sleep on the subway often bring unpleasant odors.

Richie Johnstone, 26, of Manhattan, said he has had to switch train cars because of the smell.

“I had one experience where I walked on the car with my girlfriend and there was a homeless man sleeping there, and the subway car smelled so bad that there was literally not a single person on the car,” Johnstone said. “Everyone walked on and walked back off and got on the next one.”

Kathryn Katz, a frequent visitor to New York City from New Haven, Connecticut, was one of the few riders who said she had seen improvements in subway cleanliness over the past few decades.

“I remember the subways back in the 50s and 60s with rats and everything,” Katz, 70, said. “It’s significantly cleaner.

She added: “Considering the amount of volume of people going through, it’s just amazing that it’s as clean as it is. You think there’d be trash all over the place.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/nyregion/cuomo-tide-clean-subways-riders.html" id="7003d463-c7a4-3203-a456-d225a4f23ef1">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently lashed out at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in a wide-ranging speech, criticizing the agency he effectively controls for its inefficiency and outdated technology.

Tide Detergent to Clean the Subway? Cuomo Mocked It, but Riders Just Want Solutions

Look up. There is very little snow falling this winter.

In fact, the city’s five boroughs have not seen one day of measurable snowfall since fall, when a crippling storm on Nov. 15 stranded thousands of commuters outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

Even the Washington area — more than 200 miles south of New York — had a recent snow day. Residents there spent Monday digging out from up to a foot of precipitation from a weekend storm that earned an unofficial name ribbing off the government shutdown: “Snurlough,” combining snow and furlough.

So, where is the snow in New York City?

The National Weather Service said it could not comment because of the shutdown.

But forecasts showed a possible end to the snow drought by Friday morning: In the city, 1 to 2 inches were predicted. Four additional inches could accumulate this weekend.

Still, the scarcity this season is unusual. Since 1869, the earliest year for which data is available, New York City has had only nine years with no measurable snowfall from mid-November through mid-January.

“You need two ingredients to produce snow,” said Tom Niziol, the winter weather expert at The Weather Channel. “You need moisture and you need cold air, but you haven’t been able to get much cold air into places like New York City.”

Samantha Borisoff, a climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center, cautioned that it was difficult to attribute short-term weather fluctuations to climate change, which is a longer-term trend.

She did offer letdown snow-lovers this: February is usually the snowiest month in New York City.

Jim Bengtson, one of the owners of Brothers Hardware in Manhattan, said a snowfall would help the store sell its supply of calcium chloride snow melt.

“And in Manhattan, you don’t have much space,” he said about the overflowing inventory in his shop.

But, Bengtson, who has worked in hardware stores for more than 40 years, said he is used to fluctuations in winter weather affecting sales of snow melt, shovels and heaters. Bengston estimated, for instance, that Brothers Hardware had sold 30 percent fewer heaters this season.

“We’re hoping to get rid of some of the inventory,” he said.

This weekend’s forecast was also welcome news for the staff at Thunder Ridge Ski Area, which is a couple of hours north of New York City, where snow-making machines were blowing nonstop.

“We always prefer Mother Nature to provide us with snow, but with our location in southern New York, we anticipate having to make snow every season,” said Meryl DiDio, Thunder Ridge’s office manager.

Last weekend, DiDio said, the machines worked for 100 consecutive hours.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/nyregion/nyc-weather-snow-storm.html" id="d4ad2a80-5b65-36eb-a869-fd112d3fa8f5">The New York Times</a>.

Where's the Snow? In New York City, Winter Doesn't Seem Like Its Usual Self

NEW YORK — Something seems amiss in the sky over New York City. And no, a transformer explosion is not turning it an eerie blue again.

Reported rapes rose 22 percent this year, which some experts attributed to more people reporting attacks as a result of the #MeToo movement. Hate crimes rose 5 percent, with larger increases in attacks against black and Jewish people, according to the New York Police Department.

Overall, murder and other violent crimes decreased, continuing a 28-year trend. New York’s murder rate hovered just above 3 per 100,000 people in 2018, well below the three other largest American cities, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. (New York’s population is about 8.6 million.)

Los Angeles’ murder rate is expected to be slightly more than 6 per 100,000, Chicago’s rate just less than 20 and Houston’s rate just more than 14.

Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor and criminologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said the city may find it hard to reduce violent crime much further. “At some point, rates of life-threatening violence in the city of New York are going to scrape bottom,” he said. “Any police official that says we’re going to try to push it down another 50 next year has been smoking substances that until rather recently were illegal.”

As of Dec. 30, there were 287 homicides in New York, down five from last year. That drop continued a steady decline since 1990, when there were 2,262 murders. Robberies in 2018 were also down by nearly 8 percent from the previous year, and shooting incidents decreased by 4 percent. The number of people shot fell to 894, from 933.

Yet, 1,760 rapes were reported as of Dec. 23, compared to 1,438 at the same time last year. The police said the final year-end totals for reported rape and hate crimes would not be released until later this week.

Experts on sex crimes said the increase in reported rapes does not mean more people were assaulted. Some welcomed the rise as a sign that more rape victims were going to the authorities and undergoing the ordeal of having evidence collected.

“We view it as good news because it means that more people are feeling confident to come forward and report the rape,” said Sonia Ossorio, the president of the National Organization for Women of New York. She added: “The clear indication is that more people are reporting their assaults rather than suffering in silence as so many people have done for so long.”

But Ossorio said police departments should invest more resources into the divisions that investigate sex crimes.

“There has been a fundamental shift in our society,” she said. “It’s really a call to action, not only to the NYPD, but to police departments across the country, to up their game.”

One troubling trend in 2018 was a rise in reported crimes motivated by bigotry. As of Dec. 23, hate crimes reported to the police rose 5 percent to 352 incidents. Reported crimes targeting black people because of their race increased by 33 percent, while anti-Semitic hate crimes rose 22 percent, the police said.

The rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes came as the Jewish community was still reeling from the massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 people were fatally shot.

New York’s precipitous drop in crime since the early 1990s aligns with a national trend of decreasing violence. The precise causes are hard to determine. Criminologists cite a confluence of factors, including more effective policing, improved technology, violence-prevention programs, and demographic and social changes.

“What we can hope for in New York City’s crime future is that year-end crime statistics remain boring,” Zimring said.

Experts said the drop in violent crime continued even as the police department has scaled back enforcement of marijuana laws and has ended the practice of stopping and frisking large numbers of young men in high-crime neighborhoods. Both policies disproportionately affected black and Hispanic residents.

“It shows that you can have a city that is dedicated to building a fairer justice system while also maintaining one of the safest big cities in the county,” said Ames Grawert, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/nyregion/crime-nyc-rapes-murders.html" id="ecd502d5-be04-3c12-a934-382c72c0c93e">The New York Times</a>.

Reports of Rapes and Hate Crimes Rise in 2018, but New York Remains Safest Big City

NEW YORK — New York City remained the safest big city in the country in 2018 as the murder rate continued to drop. But the number of rapes and hate crimes reported to the police rose sharply, the police said.

So crowded that 40,000 pounds of pastrami and beef were served in a week at Katz’s Delicatessen on the Lower East Side, where 3,000 to 4,000 visitors flocked each day, standing in lines that stretched three-plus blocks, the owner said.

So crowded that skaters waited more than an hour to glide in Bryant Park.

So crowded that a brief but unusual shutdown of the pedestrian and bike lanes across the Brooklyn Bridge was necessary Saturday afternoon, after the police were called because of the dangerously large crowd.

“The city is buzzing,” said Jake Dell, owner of Katz’s Delicatessen. “You step outside and you can’t help but feel it and see it.”

The holiday season always draws millions of visitors to New York, but this weekend the hordes of people seemingly brought some city institutions to their tipping points.

“I’ve never seen it like this,” said Juliette Barge, a former Brooklyn resident who now lives in Amsterdam, as she stood on the Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday.

Barge, 59, was hoping to bike over the span, something she did often when she lived in Park Slope. But, on Sunday, she was relegated to walking her bike, zigzagging around the crowds. Riding would have been a near-Herculean task with thousands of people filling both the pedestrian and the bike lanes.

On Saturday, with springlike temperatures and sunshine, the crowd on the bridge grew so large that the police shut down the pedestrian lanes “for approximately half an hour,” a spokeswoman said.

Larry Shah, 66, who has sold posters outside City Hall on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge for the past eight years, said the crowds on the bridge this weekend were unlike anything he had encountered before.

“Yesterday was horrible,” said Shah, adding that his business suffered Saturday as a result. “If there are a lot of people, they are just pushing and going across the bridge. There were a lot of people, but not a lot of buyers.”

Andre Goetres, who was visiting from Germany, called the slalom course of bikes and pedestrians “quite annoying.”

“You have to walk to the left and to the right, and there’s those bikes that nobody has their eye on,” said Goetres, 38, who lives in Berlin. “I prefer the Williamsburg Bridge.”

But visitors like Goetres will likely have a hard time finding respite elsewhere.

“Right after Christmas, the crowds tend to build in anticipation of New Year’s Eve,” said Christopher Heywood, a spokesman for NYC &amp; Co., the city’s tourism marketing arm. He added, “You’re getting a very strong mix of day trippers coming in from the tri-state region, but you’re also getting a lot of international visitors coming for holidays.”

In Times Square, there have been an average of 353,540 pedestrians each day in December, marking a nearly 6 percent increase from last year, according to the Times Square Alliance.

At the Whitney Museum of American Art, officials decided to keep the gallery open on New Year’s Day, when it is usually closed, to accommodate the large crowds. A spokesman said the museum always expects an uptick in visitors during the holiday season, but even more so this year because of their popular Andy Warhol exhibit.

Similarly, the week between Christmas and New Year is the busiest time of the year for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so much so that the museum said it takes “extraordinary measures” to prepare for the crowds. During this week, the Met typically attracts an average of 30,000 to 40,000 visitors a day.

“We have a couple of our staff famously joke, ‘Get out your long underwear,'” said Kenneth Weine, a spokesman for the museum. “They are in and outside all day long, giving advice on how to navigate the museum.”

Though the city welcomes the influx of visitors during the holiday season, Heywood said his agency has also taken steps to encourage tourists to visit at other points during the year when the city is not as crowded.

Heywood touted cheaper hotel rates, shorter lines at museums and restaurant reservations that are easier to come by as reasons tourists might opt to arrive in slower periods of the year, such as in January and February.

“We welcome people any time of the year, but we want to emphasize that New York City is open for business 365 days of the year,” he said. “It’s not a consolation prize to visit New York City after the holidays.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/30/nyregion/crowded-new-york-holidays.html" id="f3fe3dc1-4845-39d7-af10-a13bd4050a08">The New York Times</a>.

A Closed Bridge and 40,000 Pounds of Deli Meat: Measuring a Crowded New York

NEW YORK — Just how crowded is New York City in the run-up to the ball drop?

And so begins the latest viral video in which a white person accosts a black person for no apparent reason.

In this case, Chika Okafor, 29, a producer for sports website Bleacher Report, was waiting in the lobby of his apartment building Wednesday for a Lyft to take him to his company’s holiday party.

But as Okafor and a friend, also black, stood in the lobby, the unidentified white man berated them.

“I’ve never seen you before,” Okafor’s white neighbor said. “I’ve lived here 27 years.”

Okafor says he has lived in the building, a four-story walk-up on First Avenue near 74th Street, since last year.

The exchange, which was captured on video and shared by Okafor on his social media accounts, has been viewed more than 1.4 million times.

As the video racked up views, people tied it to other incidents involving white people calling police on black people going about their lives.

“Hallway Harry,” as the unidentified man has been named on social media, follows the likes of “BBQ Becky,” who called police on two black men who were grilling in a park in Oakland, California; “Permit Patty” who summoned authorities in San Francisco on an 8-year-old black girl for “illegally selling water without a permit;” and here in New York, “Cornerstore Caroline,” who called police in Brooklyn on a black boy who she falsely said groped her in a bodega.

As of October, The Times had identified 39 instances this year in which a white person called the police on black people engaging in regular activities.

“I felt insulted,” Okafor said of the encounter. “I felt violated. To me, his behavior suggested that, one, because we were people of color we were a threat to their safety, and, two, because we are people of color we can’t afford to live in that type of apartment complex.”

He added: “It’s the Upper East Side. It’s considered to be one of the wealthy parts of Manhattan. It’s a nice apartment.”

The neighbor similarly accosted a white couple just hours after the encounter with Okafor.

Janah Reynolds, who is visiting New York for the holidays with her husband and two sons, was renting an apartment on the first floor of the building through Airbnb. After dropping their bags at the apartment Wednesday, Reynolds and her husband went out while her mother-in-law stayed with the children.

When Reynolds and her husband returned to the building, she said, the same man refused to let them in, telling them it was illegal for them to rent an apartment for just a few nights. (Many New Yorkers illegally rent out their apartments on Airbnb, though it is not clear whether this particular rental was legal.)

NEW YORK — “What are you doing in my building?” a white man asked a young black man in the lobby of an Upper East Side apartment building. “You don’t live here.”

Tyler Pager

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