Despite authorities calling it a terror attack and the suspect has reportedly made antisemitic remarks at time of arrest and only targeted orthodox Jews, Congressman Chris Smith is still not sure and called on the FBI to determine if antisemitism was a motive in Dion Marsh violence spree.
Lakewood, Apr 10, 2022 |l
In a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to investigate whether antisemitism was a motive in the recent Dion Marsh violence spree. Below are excerpts of Smith’s remarks at today’s press conference in Lakewood:
“Special thanks to law enforcement for acting decisively and professionally in arresting Dion Marsh and charging him with multiple crimes allegedly committed in Lakewood and Jackson on Friday including three counts of attempted murder, carjacking, weapons possession, and three counts of bias intimidation—the latter raising serious concern that antisemitism may have been a motive.
I respectfully ask the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI to determine whether any federal laws were broken including hate crimes acts as found in 18 U.S. Code § 249.
Above all, we pray that the victims recover after this hideous assault.
As co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task force for Combating Antisemitism, I am deeply concerned that this pernicious hate—often resulting in violence—is escalating.
Silence is not an option.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jews are “consistently the most targeted religious community in the U.S. and antisemitic incidents are being reported at record levels.” The most recently available FBI hate crimes statistics shows that in 2020—despite being approximately only 2.4% of the U.S. adult population—55% of all religiously motivated hate crimes were against Jews.”
He can be subject to much stiffer penalties if the Federal government labels these heinous attacks as a hate crime. Local officials stating it is so doesn't make it so. I call upon Governor Murphy to push this as a Federal hate crime, just as Congressman Smith so rightfully did. Kudos to our police department for looking out for copycats. I would ask the State Police to send in some undercovers to check out the hate that may be being spouted in the church that the perpetrator attended just prior to his series of attacks. May this criminal never be eligible to be a free man again in his life, Amen.
ReplyDeletealso, what about the church he walked out of?
ReplyDeleteshouldn't they be investigating that to see what sort of inspiring sermon triggered violent rampage????