18 THE QUEENS COURIER • MAY 2, 2019 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Chabad of LIC holds vigil for Poway shooting victims
BY MAX PARROTT
mparrott@qns.com
@QNS
In the middle of his rendition of “Oseh
Shalom,” Rabbi Zev Wineberg paused.
“It’s OK to be joyous,” he told his audience.
Wineberg, rabbi of the Chabad of Long
Island City, organized a vigil on April
30 in Court Square Park to show solidarity
with Chabad Poway aft er a gunman
opened fi re in the San Diego synagogue
on Sunday, killing a congregant and
wounding the rabbi and two others in an
anti-Semitic attack.
Faced with the second American synagogue
shooting in the span of six months
and an uptick in anti-Semitic incidents
across Europe, Wineberg told those gathered
that the proper response is to resist
giving into fear and express Jewish pride
more openly.
“Th ere’s no solution to eradicate
anti-Semitism. Th e only solution is to
be more Semitic. If there’s more pride in
Judaism, then there will be less of these
things, please God,” said Wineberg.
During the vigil, Wineberg eulogized
the life of Lori Gilbert-Kaye, the woman
who leaped in front of Yisroel Goldstein,
the Rabbi of Chabad Poway, to save his
life.
Photo: Max Parrott/QNS
“It seems that she died the way she lived,
doing and act of hasidim, doing an act of
kindness for another individual. Putting
her life before other people’s lives to do
one last kind thing,” Wineberg said.
Participants lit candles in front of the
Queens County Court House and listened
to speeches from Wineberg; Stephen
Weiner, the president of Young Israel of
Sunnyside and Naomi Wolfensohn, president
of Ahavas Israel in Greenpoint.
Wolfensohn took the opportunity to
speak against the idea that the shooting
was an attack on the Chabad sect of
Judaism.
“An attack on Chabad is not an attack
on one group of Jews. It’s an attack on all
Jews,” she said. “It’s also an act of terrorism
against those of us who practice freedom
of religion in America. And when
the mosque in New Zealand was attacked
we went to the Greenpoint Islamic Center
in solidarity with them just as aft er
Pittsburgh they came and spent an entire
shabbat with us.”
Wineberg echoed this sentiment,
declaring the importance of publicly sharing
religious pride.
“We will not cower. We will not hide.
We will declare here in a public place in
front of the court of justice of this great
country that Am Yisrael Chai we are alive
and well and here to stay,” he said.
Why are so many rape cases in Queens being reported ‘unfounded’?
BY BILL PARRY
bparry@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
Th e NYPD reported a 22 percent
increase in rape cases citywide, but that
number is nowhere near the real story
about sexual assault in New York City,
according to Queens City Councilman
Rory Lancman.
For several years now, the NYPD and
the de Blasio administration have been
able to boast that New York City is the
safest big city in the country, and they
could do it again last year except for
the 22 percent increase in reported rape
cases. But Lancman — who’s running for
Queens district attorney — warns the situation
is even worse with new NYPD
data that shows the department determined
a crime did not occur in nearly
500 rape cases due to an alleged lack of
participation from victims or because the
rape was unfounded.
Lancman recently shared the date
with Th e Appeal, an online publication
that focuses on criminal justice issues,
emphasizing that at 14.2 percent, the rate
of unfounded rapes in Queens, meaning
a false report or complaint that does not
fi t the defi nition of a penal law crime, is
signifi cantly higher than that of any other
borough.
“Queens has an unfounded rate that
is just off the charts and should be ringing
alarm bells at the Queens district
attorney’s offi ce and One Police Plaza,”
Lancman told Th e Appeal. “Th e NYPD’s
date would suggest there’s just a rash of
women across the city and particularly
in Queens making up rape complaints to
amuse themselves, and that is nuts.”
Lancman grilled the NYPD’s top brass
during a City Council hearing last month.
“Can you tell us what the percentage
of rape or sexual assault cases that
the NYPD deemed to be unfounded
or closed because the witness is uncooperative?”
Lancman asked Police
Commissioner James O’Neill. “Do you
keep those statistics?”
O’Neill could not deliver the stats
during the hearing, saying, “We are absolutely
committed to providing justice for
survivors of sexual assault and we do this
in a number of ways. We do this in making
sure we have enough personnel in
Special Victims. We put new leadership
in there.”
And that is true. Following the
release of a scathing report by the city’s
Department of Investigation in March
2018 showed that from 2009 to 2017,
the NYPD Special Victims Division was
consistently understaff ed, sometimes by
almost 30 detectives.
Th e yearlong investigation showed the
average available time investigators in
adult sex crimes units had to allocate
each case was nearly 17 hours in Queens
in 2009, but fell each year to just six hours
and 22 minutes in 2017.
O’Neill acted swift ly with a “top-tobottom
scrubs” replacing the commanding
offi cer of the Special Victims
Division with the commander of the
109th Precinct in Flushing. O’Neill promoted
Inspector Judith Harrison to deputy
chief, and the lifelong Queens resident,
with 22 years on the force, has been
overhauling the team since November.
“Th e NYPD is committed to ensuring
that all sexual assault survivors feel the
safety and support needed to come forward
and help the NYPD bring them the
justice they deserve,” an NYPD spokeswoman
said. “Th e NYPD has made major
improvements to strengthen the Special
Victims Division with a victim-centered
approach, including new leadership,
adding investigators to the squads,
signifi cant policy enhancements, facility
improvements and deepened training
to amplify the department’s ability
to respond eff ectively to survivors, while
continuing to conduct full and thorough
investigations.”
The spokeswoman explained that
given the nature of sex crimes, particularly
the short- and long-term eff ects
such crimes have on victims, the Special
Victims Division developed the classifi -
cation of “complainant not participating
at this time” when a survivor chooses to
disengage from an investigation. Th is is a
category unique to the division; no other
NYPD bureau has it. Nor did it address
Lancman’s concern over the high rate of
“unfounded” rape cases which is separate
and diff erent, according to Lancman’s
offi ce.
“We recognize the need to empower
survivors of these crimes, and providing
them with control over their participation
in such investigations does that,” the
spokeswoman said. “Th e level of participation
by a survivor in an investigation,
including temporarily or permanently
disengaging, is their decision. If suffi cient
evidence exists for the Department to
actively pursue investigative leads without
the survivor’s assistance, we will do
so, with the goal of apprehending predators
before they strike again. However, if
all leads have been exhausted with insuffi
cient probable cause having been developed
to eff ect an arrest and a survivor
wished to disengage from an investigation,
the case will be closed under the
classifi cation ‘complainant not participating
at this time’ and will be reopened
either when new evidence emerges or
when the survivor chooses to re-engage.”
Photo via Getty Images
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