[IsraelTimes] Officials in New York charge an anti-Israel protester, Jakhi McCray, with setting 11 NYPD vehicles on fire last month.
McCray allegedly climbed a fence to access a parking lot for police vehicles on June 12, in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Once inside the lot, he ignited 10 NYPD vehicles and a trailer, the US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York says.
The cost to replace the vehicles is around $800,000.
McCray, 21, is charged with arson and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.
The NYPD identified McCray as a suspect last month. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at the time that McCray was “very active in the protest community, involving the Free Palestine movement.”
Ah. A professional. Kenny also said McCray damaged a statute at Columbia University during protests on the campus last year.
Anti-Israel activist groups, including at Columbia, rally behind McCray ahead of his initial court appearance this afternoon.
“The time has come to rise in solidarity for our comrade, Jackhi McCray,” says Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the campus alliance leading anti-Israel protests at the university.
…protest last September, including vandalizing a statue
Court filings said that surveillance video and fingerprints found on a pair of sunglasses at the scene of the arson implicated McCray in the fires.
Ahead of his arrest, police had offered up to $30,000 for information on McCray.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said on Monday that McCray had turned himself in, accompanied by his lawyer, in Brooklyn earlier in the day. He was being held in federal custody.
“Setting police vehicles ablaze is not a form of protest — it is a federal crime. Our office will not tolerate violence or destruction that undermines law enforcement efforts to ensure public safety and will prosecute this individual to the fullest extent of the law,” said US Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr.. 
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