New Jersey Man Has Gun Seized After Glorifying Guns Against Jews

Police had been watching David Greco for months, carefully monitoring his online activity. They noted that he often “threatened, advocated and celebrated the killing of Jewish people."

He also was in communication with the man accused of walking into a Pittsburgh synagogue last year and killing 11 people, they alleged. (Greco has denied this.) On Aug. 5, after months of observation, law enforcement officers paid a visit to Greco’s Camden County home.

At first, Greco, 51, refused to answer the door. He only spoke with officers after his parents came home and allowed them in the modest home.

As police questioned him about comments he made on a far-right social media platform, Greco was “extremely agitated and angry,” authorities said, but he did not talk about acting out on his disdain for Jewish people. However, they also noted that he said he “believes that Jews are raping our woman and children” and that “force or violence is necessary to realign society.

On Sept. 6, police once again visited Greco’s home, descending without warning, to seize his gun and ammunition.

Unknown to Greco, a Camden County Superior Court Judge Edward McBride had issued a temporary extreme risk protection order earlier that day based on an affidavit regarding Greco’s behavior. The order allowed police to execute a no-knock search warrant of his home and seize one semi-automatic rifle, ammunition and his firearms purchaser ID card.

Under a law that went into effect Sept.1, called the Extreme Risk Protection Order Act, a law enforcement officer, family or household member can now petition a state Superior Court judge to take away the guns of a person who they believe “poses an immediate and present danger” to themselves or others. Even if they have not committed a crime.

Two months after going into effect, the constitutionality of the law is being challenged in a proposed class action lawsuit that was filed in New Jersey federal court last month. Greco’s case is at the forefront of the suit. It is the latest lawsuit challenging strict gun control measuresGov. Phil Murphy has signed into law over the last year.

The lawsuit challenges whether there is legal authority to execute a search warrant after a temporary extreme risk protection order is issued.

The law deprives Greco, and other gun owners in New Jersey, of their due process rights, as they are not given a chance to be heard in court before a temporary order is issued and police take firearms, says Albert J. Rescinio, Greco’s attorney. And can a gun owner have their “constitutional rights abrogated” for things said “that the government or anyone else might not like?” the attorney asked.

“Why can’t you give people the opportunity to know what is going on? To give them the opportunity to be heard?" Rescinio said. "You are being deprived of your constitutional rights without a hearing, without being given the opportunity to know what is going on.”

The lawsuit asks the court to issue a preliminary injunction throughout the state stopping the implementation of the law as it currently written.

The lawsuit was filed against Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness and numerous local law enforcement agencies. Grewal’s office declined to comment. The Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness did not respond to multiple requests seeking comment.

Jewish Boy Assaulted in Locker Room, Called 'Dirty Jew'

A young German Jew has revealed the shocking details of an antisemitic assault he was subjected to while changing in a gym locker room on Monday. Samuel Kantorovych said on his Facebook page that he was changing in the locker room of the gym in Freiburg — a city in southwestern Germany that is home to a Jewish community of under 1,000 — when a man snuck up behind him and ripped off his kippah.

Kantorovych said that the man was shouting the epithets “You dirty Jew!” and “Free Palestine!” The assailant, Kantorovych continued, “spat on my kippah and threw it in the garbage!”

“I was shocked!,” he explained.  “He looked at me and asked me, ‘Do you want me to beat you up? F__ off you dirty Jew!'”

Kantorovych said that he had been “overwhelmed by this situation and (for whatever reason) I asked him, ‘Here, in front of everybody?'”

He wrote: “Somehow I was hoping someone in the changing room full of men would interfere…. I turned around. I looked everyone standing around in the eyes!!! No one reacted, everyone was just watching.”

The young man said that he “literally was in fear of my life realizing that no one would help me but watch! Baruch HaShem, an old man stood up and tried to calm the situation down.”

The attacker then “just walked away like nothing happened! To the staff member trying to question him he said that nothing happened and even if something happened, no one can prove it!”

Kantorovych told the local Badische Zeitung news outlet in a separate interview that 10 men had been present in the locker room during the attack.

“I had this naive idea of ​​civil courage,” he said. “If anyone had said anything, I would not have felt so alone.” He said that he was “infinitely grateful” to the man who eventually intervened.

Freiburg police were called to the scene and are now studying Kantorovych’s kippah for traces of the assailants’ DNA. Kantorovych said that he had resigned his gym membership out of fear that he might again encounter his attacker. “People think that antisemitism only exists on TV or in Berlin, but the reality is different,” he remarked.

Antisemitic outrages have risen sharply in Germany over the last five years. Data released by the Federal Ministry of the Interior over the summer documented a total of 1,799 antisemitic offenses in 2018 — many observers believe that number is fraction of a much larger total, as the majority of antisemitic crimes go unreported.

A survey of German public attitudes to Jews conducted by the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in October showed that more than one in four respondents agreed with a range of antisemitic statements that were based upon classic anti-Jewish tropes.