NEW YORK — A horde of black-clad anarchists ran wild through southwestern Elmhurst, Queens after the Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal, targeting the middle-class area over its support of the New York Police Department, incoming mayor Eric Adams and local officials charged Saturday.
“These are outside agitators that have one desire, and that is to destroy our city and create conflicts and tensions between New Yorkers,” Adams said at news conference in Elmhurst Park, once the location of the Elmhurst gas tanks.
“It is imperative that we send a loud and clear message that this will not happen in our community,” Adams said.
Adams was joined local by the local congressman, Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, and City Councilman Bob Holder, who described a scene where 40 to 50 people stormed the area late Friday while flipping garbage cans, tearing down American flags, smashing car windows and blocking traffic.
Police made five arrests, with Holder recounting how some in the crowd were armed with hatchets and hammers.
“We are targeted because we support the police here, we want more police,” said Holder, whose statement was echoed by ex-cop Adams. “I voted against defunding the police ... This again wasn’t a protest, these weren’t protesters. They were rioters.”
The Queens violence, with “f--- you” spray-painted on the back of one car, came hours after the Friday acquittal of Rittenhouse, 18, who was accused of using an AR-style semi-automatic rifle to kill two men and wound a third in Kenosha, Wis. during protests after a white Kenosha police officer shot and wounded a Black man.
Rittenhouse said he fired in self-defense.
Adams, who takes over from Mayor Bill de Blasio on Jan. 1, agreed that Holden and the neighborhood were singled out “merely because (of their) belief in their law enforcement officers who are living in this community.”
A local woman recounted how she was followed by a car with a female driver and four anarchists who randomly targeted her with shouts of “white b-----s like you need to die” as she walked toward her home. One tossed a cup of unspecified liquid at the woman as they drove past.
“That was scary,” said the woman, whose name was Caitlin. “They just wanted to get into a fight, get into an altercation.”
Adams offered an apology to the woman before adding the rioters were “attempting to create violence between our communities.”
The Rittenhouse verdict led Hawk Newsome, co-founder of the city’s Black Lives Matter chapter, to declare the jury’s not guilty decision put the lives of anti-racism protesters at immediate risk.
“What going to happen now is racist people ... feel like they can go out there, pick a fight with you while you protest, and kill you and get away with it,” Newsome said in an Instagram post.
“This sets precedent ... You can go out there and you can kill (a protester), and you can get away with it.”
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