Ripping New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as "apathetic" amid a spate of anti-Semitic attacks, Curtis Sliwa's Guardian Angels is starting patrols in Brooklyn on Sunday, according to NBC News.
"These attacks are taking place, and the cops have not been proactive at all," Sliwa, who founded his private, unarmed crime-prevention group in 1979, told NBC News. "It comes from City Hall and the mayor. He's been just apathetic.
"We're a visual deterrence in our red berets and our red satin jackets," Sliwa told NBC News. "Nobody's going to commit an attack when we're around.
"We'll physically restrain the persons responsible, make a citizen's arrest, and hold them until the police arrive," he added, per the report.
The patrols, which will start at noon in Crown Heights and expand to Williamsburg and Borough Park later in the day, come hours after five people were wounded in a stabbing attack at a Hanukkah party at a rabbi's house in upstate New York, according to the report.
There have been eight attacks on Jews in Brooklyn since Dec. 13, the New York Police Department reports.
"We have no tolerance for anti-Semitism in New York City," Mayor Bill de Blasio's press office responded in a statement Saturday, per NBC News.
"The best police department in the world has increased deployment in Crown Heights, Boro Park, and Williamsburg, and has launched a new intelligence unit to prevent hate crimes from occurring. We will continue to work hand in hand with the community to keep our city safe."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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