Area police on high alert; no tolerance for bias

Area police on high alert; no tolerance for bias

By ELAINE VAN DEVELDE

Staff Writer

Area police are committed to making certain that a national tragedy won’t turn into local hate crime mayhem of any proportion. The message: intolerance will not be tolerated.

Since what has been deemed a terrorist declaration of war on Sept. 11 — with the crashing of two suicide terrorist planes into the New York World Trade Center twin towers in New York City, one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and another that crashed in Pennsylvania on its way to Washington, D.C. and some believe the White House — the police in the area have been in high alert.

It’s become a mainstream mind set that angry zealots after any person who even resembles the nationality of the terrorists engineering the attack will be "fettered out by the law," said Middletown Police Chief John Pollinger. And the attitude of other departments follows suit.

"We already had an incident," added Pollinger. "It’s just not going to be tolerated. A very closed-minded individual gave blood after the (World Trade Center) incident occurred, on Tuesday night, went to the Mobile (gas) station on Route 35, across from the police station, on his motorcycle and assaulted the first Middle Eastern-looking gas station attendant he saw. He was arrested.

"People who do things like this are just falling to the same demeanor of the terrorists themselves. Taking anger out on someone who looks even remotely similar to the purported terrorists is just wrong and will not be tolerated. People who do this sort of thing are justifying skewed, misdirected retaliation."

Pollinger went on to recount that there were similar problems during World War II with people’s angst being directed toward any Japanese who crossed their path.

He added that as a precaution, he had assigned two detectives to the Muslim mosque mass at noon on Friday and attended himself. Pollinger also met with a leader of the Red Hill Road mosque, Mohammed Mosaad, to assure him that the force would be on alert and intolerant of any bias incidents.

Of Middletown’s response, Mosaad said, "We are very fortunate in this community that there is understanding and alertness to these possibilities. Middletown people, though, have been terrific. We all feel horrible about the terrorism. As Muslims, we preach peace and look down on violence. We encourage any of the people of our faith who are bothered by people who don’t understand and take it out on the wrong person to ignore them and understand that they’re not thinking right."

Mosaad, on a grander scale, went on to say that his religion teaches that "to kill one soul without reason is to kill the world."

Pollinger echoed the sentiment saying: "The Muslim faith is based on non-violence. To reach out condemn or blame these people for the evil of others just because they remotely resemble a terrorist is unacceptable."

Pollinger reiterated that the Middletown Police are keeping a very high profile to ensure protection of those who had been or may be unjustly singled out for no justifiable reason other than race similarity.

By the same token Hazlet Deputy Police Chief James Broderick said that Hazlet will not tolerate any such misguided targets of innocent people.

"We’re keeping an extra-diligent eye out for hate incidents targeting the wrong people," said Broderick. "There are a lot of angry people out there taking narrow-minded views out on innocent people of different cultures. Unfortunately, our country is going to be like this for a while and we’re just going to have to make certain people know that such twisted, random hate acts will be punished."

Broderick added that though there had been no arrests, there was at least one incident reported wherein unkind words were directed to a Middle Eastern person.