In the wake of an alleged hate crime against one of their own, a group of Muslim police officers in New York City are requesting a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss mounting similar incidents, reports Yahoo News.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams wrote a letter to Trump on the officers’ behalf on Dec. 6. He notes in the letter the “deep tensions” following the “arduous national election” that have resulted in a “disturbing and dangerous pattern of hate crimes” the NYPD says have spiked 115 percent since Election Day.
The increase has had a “particular impact on Jewish, LGBTQ and Muslim communities,” Adams adds. “Without a doubt, the rhetoric of this campaign season has been a driving factor in a large number of these incidents.”
Trump has yet to respond.
Adams asks Trump to meet with representatives of the city’s 900 Muslim cops, which comprise the largest Muslim force in the nation.
They “deserve guidance on how they will be protected,” wrote Adams. “Moreover, the welfare of these officers speaks to the greater welfare of the millions of law-abiding Muslim-Americans, many of whom are fearful at this juncture in history.”
The meeting request follows an alleged hate crime last week against an NYPD officer who is a Muslim woman. The attack unfolded when Aml Elsokary, who was off duty at the time and did not identify herself as a police officer, confronted a man on a Brooklyn street who had shoved her teenage son. Elsokary said the man called her a member of the Islamic State, threatened to cut her throat and told her to go back to her country. Christopher Nelson, 36, was arrested in connection with the incident and charged with menacing as a hate crime and aggravated harassment.
At a press conference last week with Mayor Bill de Blasio, Adams and members of the NYPD Muslim Officers Society, Elsokary spoke about the attack. “I know that my department and my city is here to protect me,” she said, adding that she knew New Yorkers would be “supportive.”
Elsokary, an 11-year veteran of the NYPD, was honored for her courage in 2014 after she and her partner saved a year-old baby girl from a burning apartment building.
“President-elect Trump needs to hear from and respond to the concerns of Officer Elsokary and other Muslim members of our law enforcement community,” Adams told Yahoo News. “They are not only the first line of defense on our streets; they are ambassadors of the American diversity that they represent.”