Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced new funding to harden security infrastructure and further protect communities in and around the community of Monsey, where a man attacked a home full of Jewish worshipers on the seventh night of Hanukkah on Dec. 28, 2019. The Governor is directing $340,000 for the village of New Square to install license plate reader technology, which was used to catch the Monsey attacker, as well as other security cameras. The Governor is directing up to $340,000 to the Town of Ramapo to install the same technology on roads in and around Monsey. The expanded New York State Hate Crimes Task Force, which the Governor announced during his 2020 State of the State address, will evaluate requests from other municipalities for license plate readers.

A water main break flooded streets on Manhattan’s Upper West Side near Lincoln Center and hampered subway service during the Monday morning rush hour. The Fire Department of New York responded to the flooding around 5 a.m. near Broadway and West 62nd Street. The water spread for blocks and was several inches deep in places. “It’s crazy, you need a boat or something to get through. I didn’t end wear boots today and now we got all this,” commuter Michael Romero, 27, of the Bronx told the New York Post. Abigail Marie, 33, of Manhattan, said city workers and firefighters responded quickly after the streets started “flooding a lot and from all directions.” “You have to be careful, there’s big puddles around and they’re deeper than they seem,” she told the Post.

There has been another anti-semitic attack in NYC. This one was in Queens. It happened at 176th Street near 76 Avenue, in the Fresh Meadows section of Queens, when swastikas were found inside a car on Monday morning. The NYPD 107 Precinct says they are investigating the incident. Assemblymember Daniel Rosenthal told YWN “With the dramatic rise in antisemitism in New York State, the Queens Jewish community has been extremely concerned; this morning our fears were realized. The targeted attacks on Jews is escalating at an alarming rate and has reared its ugly head in our own backyard overnight.

On the Bronx streets where New York City’s new police commissioner started as a patrolman in the crime-ravaged early 1990s, gunfire and burned-out buildings were everywhere. Sometimes the police radio would crackle with a different kind of call, not for a shooting or stabbing but for a sick child, a locked apartment door or a marriage on the rocks. “I remember thinking, ‘Well, why do they call the police for this? It’s not an emergency,’” Commissioner Dermot Shea told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “And, you know, you kind of get a little wiser over time.

New York’s health care industry is waiting with some trepidation to see how Gov. Andrew Cuomo intends to plug an over $8 billion hole in the state’s Medicaid program. The Democrat is expected to release his annual budget proposal in the next two weeks, and the stickiest issue he has to address will be how to curtail spending on the program, which last year soared over its budget. New York’s Medicaid program is the nation’s largest, serving over 6 million people or about one in three New Yorkers. Cuomo first went after rising costs in 2011. Reforms to the program helped stem spending from 2011 to 2015, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

A judge has blocked New York state from enforcing an executive order banning flavored vaping products. Acting state Supreme Court Justice Catherine Cholakis ruled that the state Public Health and Health Planning Council overstepped its authority last September when it issued a ban on e-cigarettes and e-liquids flavored with anything other than tobacco or menthol. In a ruling issued this week in Albany, Cholakis said regulating the vaping industry is a job for the state Legislature, not the executive branch, whose function is to implement policy set by lawmakers. The emergency ban was challenged by the Vapor Technology Association, an industry group, and two of its member businesses. The judge granted their request for an injunction against enforcing the ban.

The number of residents seeking to own handguns has risen sharply in a New York community shaken last month by a machete attack that injured five men during a Hanukkah celebration. The Journal News reports 73 pistol permit applications have been filed with the Rockland County Clerk’s Office since the Dec. 28 attack at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, a hamlet in the town of Ramapo northwest of New York City. That compares to 51 applications the office received during the eight weeks prior to the stabbing, County Clerk Paul Piperato told the newspaper. Sixty-eight of the new applications came from Ramapo residents, including 31 from Monsey. “It’s definitely because of this incident,” Piperato told the newspaper, referring to the attack.

New York City police are investigating anti-Semitic graffiti, including a swastika, found sprayed in a stairwell of a local high school. An employee of Brooklyn Tech High School found the message scribbled in black marker inside the third-floor stairwell, police said. No arrests have been made. Meanwhile, in Williamsburg, YWN was provided with a video of another disturbing incident. On the video (posted below), the viewr will see a group of young non-Jewish teens on bikes stopping in front of Hasidic-owned homes, and throwing rocks at them. This happened on Shabbos afternoon on Skillman between DeKalb & Lafayette. The discovery of the graffiti Thursday followed a wave of anti-Semitic attacks in and around New York City.

A few days ago, Chasidic singer Chananye Schnitzler visited Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan to sing for a cancer patient. As he was singing, Schnitzler noticed a non-Jewish man stood at the door watching the performance. When Schnitzler was finished, the stranger went over to Schnitzler and told him he was moved by the music and asked is he could come into a nearby hospital room to sing and give a blessing to his relative – also a cancer patient. A relative of Schnitzler told YWN that “Hatzadik Chanaya, without hesitation immediately went into the next room and performed an incredible Kiddush Hashem!” Mi K’amcha Yisroel! (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

After a fast-moving blaze which destroyed the headquarters of the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police Department on New Year’s Day, Chaverim of Rockland County came to the rescue. With the intervention of Rabbi Abe Friedman, Chaplain of the PIP Police Department, Chaverim of Rockland County generously agreed to provide their state-of-the-art Mobile Command center, to serve as the temporary location of the PIP Police Headquarters until a more permanent location will be arranged. The Chaverim Mobile command post is equipped with state of the art communications and IT equipment, and is perfectly suited to serve as a temporary Police Headquarters.