NYPD fails to issue a single fine after 500 people gather in Brooklyn warehouse to watch Jewish religious play on the same day Gov. Cuomo orders hundreds of schools in nine NYC neighborhoods to shut down
The NYPD failed to issue a single fine after 500 people gathered in a warehouse in Brooklyn on Monday to watch a Jewish play in one of the neighborhoods currently experiencing a concerning uptick in coronavirus cases.
Police told CBS New York that they did not intervene to break up the event in Borough Park as it was a religious gathering, despite pictures from inside the venue showing many not wearing masks and children performing close to each other on stage.
The fire department later cut the padlocks off the warehouse and replaced them with their own citing safety issues in the hall, City Hall said, but the move will also prevent the play from continuing throughout the rest of the week.
It came as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered hundreds of schools in nine NYC zip codes, including Borough Park, to close amid the worrying rise in COVID-19 cases.
Pictures from inside the warehouse showed people crowded together on stage
Images from inside the venue showed a lack of social distancing with hundreds gathered
The positivity rate in Borough Park on Monday was 8.31 percent, far above the city's average of 1.83 percent. It has remained over three percent for more than a week.
Despite the rise in cases, hundreds gathered together at the warehouse Monday for the Jewish holiday Sukkot and watched a play performed by children aged between 10 and 13 years old.
'We had a play for a couple of hundred kids and they did buy tickets for it, but only a certain number because you're only allowed to let a certain number of people in,' Heshy Tischler, an activist in the Jewish Orthodox community, told the New York Post.
He said that a permit was originally acquired to hold an outdoor carnival in honor of the holiday but that officials had asked them to host the celebration 'on private property' because of the outbreaks.
'So instead we made a play, a religious play, for the young children,' he said
The NYPD confirmed that the event kept to the restrictions regarding indoor religious gatherings by 'operating at 50% capacity which is allowed'.
The venue can hold up to 2,000 people.
However, the restriction also requires that social distancing, mask wearing and other coronavirus guidelines are maintained.
According to CBS, FDNY found few people with masks on when they arrived after a report of an overcrowding condition.
Firefighters arrived at around 3pm Monday, three hours into the event, to look at the sprinkler system and according to Tischler, called the NYPD when they saw the large gathering.
While the NYPD responded, the event was not shut down and officers handed out masks to children who did not have their face covered.
The NYPD arrived and handed out masks but did not close down the event
The religious gathering was in this warehouse in Borough Park, Brooklyn
The religious gathering was attended by 500 people but remained at 25 percent capacity
Officers left the scene at around 6.30pm, the Post reports, and did not take another further action.
The FDNY issued several summons and violations after the event over fire safety issues in the warehouse.
'We'd heard the performance at this theater was scheduled to go on for several more nights this week, and we're going to make sure that doesn't happen,' a City Hall spokesman told the Post.
Tischler hit out at the response and claimed that law enforcement were wrong to interrupt the event.
The activist has been an outspoken opponent to what he says is an attack on the Orthodox Jewish community and last week interrupted a press conference held by city officials aimed at spreading awareness about coronavirus and its risks in the neighborhood.
'They're walking around torturing this neighborhood for no reason,' he said. 'We just wanted to give the kids something nice.'
'Mr de Blasio, executive idiot, you're going to get it, we're going to come after you, we're going to watch you,' he added of the NYC mayor.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a warning Monday about large religious gatherings
NYPD left the warehouse without issuing any fines despite the hundreds gathered
Children were seen without masks as they emerged from the warehouse Monday
De Blasio hit back, however, stating that events of this scale should not be happening as he pushed for businesses within the affected zip codes to be close.
'There never should have been a gathering like that and the folks who did it did something harmful and that has to be addressed,' he said, according to ABC 7 NY.
De Blasio's call for business shutdowns in the nine zip codes was refused by Cuomo Monday but the governor did agree to shut down the schools.
Nearly 100 public schools and 200 private schools are impacted by the shutdown which began Tuesday.
They will remain closed for at least two weeks and maybe as long as a month, depending on how long the zip codes remain over three percent positivity.
The decision was made despite only two positive cases coming from 1,300 tests conducted in 35 schools in these neighborhoods.
'I obviously deeply, deeply wanted to see our schools open and stay open, but for these particular zip codes, the right thing to do is to take them down for a period of time,' the mayor said. 'Hopefully in a matter of weeks they'll be right back up.'
School buses are seen parked in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park on Tuesday as the first day of the closures begins. It is one of nine zip codes hit by the shutdown
Hasidic males with facemasks, walk past a closed public school in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park on Tuesday. Schools closed in the zip code under orders from city officials after the neighborhood experienced a troubling rise in coronavirus cases
The nine areas hit with school closures this week, all in Brooklyn or Queens, have all have a positivity rate above three percent in the past week.
The city's average daily positivity rate must remain before five percent to remain open.
Many of the areas hit by the recent spikes are home to sizeable Jewish Orthodox populations.
Those areas represent 7 percent of the city's population but have been responsible for more than 20 percent of all new infections over the past four weeks.
Many religious schools in these neighborhoods resumed in-person classes in early September.
Gov. Cuomo met with Orthodox Jewish leaders on Tuesday but said he wanted to make clear that the coronavirus guidelines apply to people of all faiths.
He put religious institutions on notice as he announced the school closures Monday, threatening to shut down temples and churches following 'super-spreader' mass gatherings that he said 'have been going on for weeks'.
'The state is going to take over enforcement oversight in all the hot spot clusters,' Cuomo said.
POSITIVE TEST RATES: As of Monday, the statewide infection rate was at 1.01 percent. The average positive test rate in these hotspot neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn is at 5.5 percent which as led to school closures in these areas from Tuesday
CASE RATE PER 100,000: The number of new COVID-19 cases is rising in pockets of the city, predominantly in neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens that are home to the city's large Orthodox Jewish population. Gov. Cuomo has threatened to shut down religious gatherings
The governor believes that non-essential businesses and public spaces in the hot spots should also close but that the state would come up with a better plan than closures by zip code.
'A zip code is not the best basis to make these decisions,' Cuomo said.
'A zip code is designed for postal service. It has no relevance to stopping a health pandemic. We have better data. We have data that goes down to the address level. You can find out exactly where people live who tested positive and draw the geographic template around that area.'
New York faced one of the nation's earliest and most devastating outbreaks of the coronavirus in the spring but has since managed to largely curtail its spread.
As of Monday, the statewide infection rate was at 1.01 percent.
Cuomo and de Blasio have repeatedly squabbled over government responses to the spread of COVID-19.
Cuomo again chastised de Blasio on Monday for what he said was lackluster enforcement of social distancing rules.
The emphasis on the Orthodox communities in the schools closures rankled many of their members, even as civic and religious leaders acknowledged the dangers posed by the new outbreak and urged compliance with guidelines.
The announcement of de Blasio's plan was made on Sunday - the second day of Judaism's Sukkot holiday when Orthodox Jews would not be using telephones or computers and thus wouldn't have heard the news until sundown.
'Announcing this in the middle of a Jewish holiday shows City Hall's incompetence and lack of sensitivity towards the Jewish Community,' tweeted Daniel Rosenthal, a state Assembly member from Queens.
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