Chaos unfolds amid heavy NYPD presence in Hasidic Jewish neighborhood
Video clips obtained by The Post and posted online show a heavy police presence amid a chaotic scene in a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn on Thursday afternoon — two days after a massive funeral there that drew big crowds despite coronavirus restrictions.
In one clip, horns honk, people shout and sirens wail as a cop orders bystanders, “Back up! Back up!” in front of the Judaica Corner store in Borough Park.
“This is getting violent over here. They just arrested somebody,” a narrator says.
Another clip, recorded from inside a vehicle and posted on Twitter, shows police tape stretched across a street and a cop ordering the driver, “Keep going straight! Keep going straight!”
A source said the incident involved a funeral procession.
The chaos unfolded in the wake of a “zero tolerance” warning from Mayor Bill de Blasio to New York’s “Jewish community, and all communities” regarding violations of social distance rules.
The controversial threat followed a mass gathering Tuesday of thousands of mourners outside the Williamsburg funeral service for a prominent rabbi, Chaim Mertz, who died of the coronavirus.
A spokesperson for the NYPD said cops responded Thursday to a synagogue on Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, where they issued two summonses over doors being chained from the inside. Another summons was issued for social distancing.