A new version of a City Council bill would let the NYPD decide when city houses of worship should be protected from protesters by \u201cbuffer zones\u201d and how big the zones should be.<\/p>\n
City lawmakers will hold a public hearing on the bill, which is slightly changed from its original form, on Wednesday. Where the previous version of the bill designated a buffer zone of up to 100 feet, the new version gives the NYPD the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether there should be a buffer zone, how big it will be and and how long it will be enforced.<\/p>\n
Police would also be required to implement the zone and tell protesters and those entering and leaving a house of worship that a buffer zone has been set up, according to the bill.<\/p>\n
Establishing buffer zones has been a hot-button issue for months, after pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside a number of synagogues. Protesters at a demonstration in Queens chanted slogans in support of Hamas, which drew condemnation across the political spectrum, including from Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/a>.<\/p>\n First Amendment and civil liberties advocates have been skeptical and argue the law is unconstitutional.<\/p>\n If the bill is passed, the NYPD commissioner will have to present a plan to the mayor and City Council speaker for approval. The bill’s stated goal will be to protect protesters’ First Amendment rights while also shielding worshippers from intimidation or interference.<\/p>\n If the bill is passed, the plan will have to be implemented by the police commissioner in 120 days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new version of a City Council bill would let the NYPD decide when city houses of worship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-144174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-ny","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-nyc-headlines","12":"tag-nyc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}