Police officers responded to the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York, on January 9, 2024. | Source: Anadolu / Getty
The shocking revelation of an unsanctioned tunnel under a synagogue in Brooklyn, New York, and the peaceful response by police in the face of violence against them at an apparent crime scene is the latest evidence of a racial double standard, particularly when it comes to policing Black people suspected of doing far less, people critical of the situation said in a series of social media posts.
In case you missed it, as many as 12 people rioting at Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in the Crown Heights neighborhood were arrested on Monday after trying to stop an illegal tunnel from being sealed off.
Video footage from the incident quickly went viral and showed a violent interaction with responding NYPD officers, including physically pushing law enforcement and flipping over tables in a scene with several dozen people present.
Mainstream media coverage is reporting the narrative provided by Chabad Lubavitch, which has sympathetically referred to the people rioting as “young agitators.”
According to those reports, the tunnel – which, again, was illegally dug – was under the Chabad Lubavitch headquarters and stretched to underneath another nearby property that is also owned by Chabad Lubavitch.
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After Chabad Lubavitch ordered the tunnel sealed on Monday, the “young agitators” arrived to prevent the work from being done, resulting in the NYPD being called to intervene.
The New York Times reported that “skirmishes with officers” resulted in arrests.
Beyond the media’s forgiving narrative, the entire situation is both an example of how the police can respond nonviolently to a chaotic situation and yet another instance of the NYPD, in particular, deciding against using force when it comes to suspects who are not Black and brown.
After all, the NYPD is the same organization responsible for things like brazenly beating a 12-year-old Black girl in her head outside of her middle school for an alleged offense caught on video that didn’t come near resembling the rioting violence at Chabad Lubavitch. That is to speak nothing of the violence waged by NYPD against hundreds of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters.
The allegations of policing along racial lines are nothing new for the NYPD, which in 2021 was sued by the state attorney general for responding to protesters demanding racial justice with violence and excessive force – none of which was on display at Chabad Lubavitch earlier this week. Data shows a disproportionate number of the protesters arrested were Black.
Hawk Newsome, an activist who previously brought attention to video footage that showed the NYPD responding violently to Black communities at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, took to Instagram to call out the racial double standard when it comes to policing in New York City.
“Let our Black Asses go and dig some underground tunnel then fight the police when they come to fix it,” Newsome posted Tuesday in a message to his more than 52,000 followers. “Man they would send a swat team to shoot everything in there. But this is White Privilege in action.”
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