New York City police arrested a group of Hasidic Jewish worshippers amid a dispute over a secret tunnel excavated beneath a street next to a historic Brooklyn synagogue, setting off a melee between officers and those who were trying to defend the passageway.
Video footage from the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Crown Heights on Monday showed officers removing a man from a tunnel that had been driven through into the synagogue, when a group of onlookers begin shoving police and tossing wooden desks.
A spokesperson for the Chabad center said a “group of extremist students” had broken through the walls of adjacent properties. The synagogue’s leadership had hired a construction crew to repair the damage—a move that eventually led to the brawl.
