A man was arrested for harassing two women in Bay Ridge on Wednesday. According to one of the women, Arab-American activist Linda Sarsour, the man also threw a trash can at them.
Sarsour described the incident on Facebook:
My Deputy Director and I were harassed and assaulted by a bigoted drunk who hurled hateful Islamophobic and anti-Arab epithets at us on 5th Avenue in Bay Ridge. He said "you are cutting people's heads off sharmoota, I'm going to cut off your head and see how your people will feel, you Arab bitch" and plenty more after that. He had some sort of item or tool in his back pocket (we could see the handle of it) he ran after us and picked up a huge NYC metal garbage can and threw it at us causing us to have to run in to oncoming traffic.
AAANY is five blocks away from a police precinct and it took NYPD over 45 minutes to show up. But even before that I went to 4th avenue and saw an empty police car parked on the corner, immediately looked around saw Steve's bagels and walked in. Sure enough, the cops who were dispatched were ordering sandwiches. That exchange didn't go well. Maybe next time I need a knife in my back before the police think it's important enough for them to show up.
Police arrested Brian Boshell, 45, and charged him with menacing and aggravated harassment as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon.
According to the NYPD, the reason why it took so long for cops to respond to the two 911 calls that Sarsour's colleague Kayla Santosuosso made is because she didn't explain they were attacked. Sarsour told the Daily News that the second call was made while they were fleeing Boshell, "She’s calling while we’re running. She said, ‘He’s being violent — the man is chasing us!’"
The News reports that the call was marked as a "dispute" so the cops decided to have a sandwich break. Internal Affairs is looking into the matter.
