Police are investigating an act of vandalism at a Brooklyn Heights bagel shop after a sticker referencing Hamas was found on the business\u2019s side door. The owners and staff of Olde Brooklyn Bagel Shoppe say they do not believe the incident was random.<\/p>\n
According to the owner, a customer alerted staff on Sunday that the sticker had been placed on the side entrance.<\/p>\n
When workers reviewed their security footage, they discovered video of a man walking up to the door, placing the sticker with the words “Pee on Hamas” written on it, and then leaving.<\/p>\n
Police sources at the scene said the incident happened around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The shop is owned by Palestinian American Fouad ‘Frankie’ Asad, who said his store contains no political messaging or cultural symbols related to his ethnicity.<\/p>\n
“It’s disturbing to us you know, we are Palestinian, but we don’t support anything like that- I’m born and raised in Brooklyn,” he said. “To put a sticker up like that is absurd.” <\/p>\n
Police were seen at the business reviewing security camera footage from the scene, in what sources say is currently a vandalism investigation. <\/p>\n
Asad feels that he and his employees are being targeted for their ethnicity. News 12 has reached out to police to find out whether the case will be upgraded to a hate crime.<\/p>\n
“To me it is a hate crime, when you are taking about a war over there, and blaming people here, we don’t bring any politics in, we leave all that at the door,” he said. <\/p>\n
Asad told police that a man matching the description of the person who placed the sticker had come in and harassed restaurant staff, asking if they were Palestinian. <\/p>\n
Police were seen reviewing security footage to see if the incidents were related, and if the man had entered the store prior to placing the sticker. <\/p>\n
Police were seen reviewing security footage to determine if the incidents were related and to confirm whether the man entered the store prior to placing the sticker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police are investigating an act of vandalism at a Brooklyn Heights bagel shop after a sticker referencing Hamas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-202822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202822","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=202822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}