By Howard Portnoy, Liberty Unyielding
In case you missed the story, which broke late yesterday afternoon, a man in midtown Manhattan attacked an off-duty NYPD police officer with a meat cleaver, gashing his face before being shot by fellow officers.
Today, new details have emerged about the cleaver wielder. He has been identified as 32-year-oldAkram Joudeh, a Muslim with 15 prior arrests, “including one on Aug. 27 after he was found carrying knives near a synagogue.”
Yesterday’s attack, it turns out, had nothing to do with Joudeh’s religious beliefs or his dislike for police, which former neighbors of his maintain is strong. Exhibit A: One of his priors in 2013 was for “criminal mischief” for “smashing a car with a wooden fence post,”which he admitted he thought “was a detective’s car.”
Rather, yesterday’s incident, as Steven Bognar of WNBC explains in a tweet, was an act of “self-preservation.” Read more….
