Anti-Semitism, hatred of police blamed for Jersey City shootings

Two people who opened fire on a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, New Jersey, after fatally shooting a police detective in a nearby cemetery were motivated by a hatred of Jewish people and law enforcement, officials said on Thursday.

"We believe the two shooters were acting on their own," New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal told a news conference in Jersey City. "The evidence points to acts of hate. I can confirm that we're investigating this matter as potential acts of domestic terrorism, fueled by both anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs."

The FBI was investigating the rampage as "a domestic terrorism incident with a hate crime bias", said Gregory Ehrie, special agent in charge of the bureau's Newark office, The New York Times reported.

Police said David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, fatally shot Detective Joseph Seals at Bay View Cemetery on Tuesday before driving to the market about a mile away and opening fire, killing three people inside.

A fourth victim, who hasn't been publicly identified, was also inside the store when the gunfire began and was able to escape despite being wounded.

Officials believe that the violence began when Anderson and Graham's van was approached by Seals at the cemetery. He apparently recognized the van from a bulletin related to the killing last weekend of a 34-year-old Uber driver in nearby Bayonne.

After shooting Seals, the couple then parked the vehicle across the street from the grocery store. Surveillance video shows the two jumping out of the van and firing as they walked toward the store.

After an hours-long shootout that kept about a dozen area schools in lockdown for most of the afternoon, police used an armored vehicle to get inside the market, where they found the two shooters dead, officials said.

Investigators found firearms belonging to the assailants inside the supermarket, including an AR-15-style weapon and a shotgun, as well as an additional gun, and a pipe bomb inside the rental van.

Grewal confirmed the shooters left a note inside the van but rejected media reports that described it as a "manifesto".

"What we know at this point is that they had a tremendous amount of firepower," Grewal said. He declined to comment on whether the shooters intended to attack additional locations.

Evidence has surfaced that both assailants had expressed interest in the Black Hebrew Israelites, but investigators haven't established a formal link to the group, Grewal said. 

Black Hebrew Israelites are groups of black Americans who claim to be direct descendants of the ancient Israelites. Various sects exist within the movement, with some offshoots holding anti-Semitic views. It has no connection to mainstream Judaism.

A day after the shooting, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made public that the city's police department had quietly created a new unit to combat anti-Semitism and extremist hate groups.

He announced the new unit named Racial and Ethnically Motivated Extremism, or R.E.M.E. He said it would be within the New York Police Department's intelligence bureau and will focus on "identifying any trends and any signs of racially and ethnically motivated extremism" and preventing associated terror or crime.

While the unit has been in place for weeks, de Blasio said that "this is the time" to talk publicly about the missions of the unit — to "directly take on the hate groups that are trying to spread in this country and that pose a threat to so many communities".

He said that the violence in Jersey City confirmed that "there is a crisis of anti-Semitism gripping this nation; there is a crisis of anti-Semitism in this city".

"Now we have seen this extraordinarily extreme form of violence reach the doorstep of New York City, and we have to take that as a warning sign," he added.

Figures compiled by NYPD officials show the city recorded 323 hate crimes in the first 10 months of this year, up 33 percent from 243 incidents in the same period in 2018. Anti-Semitic incidents were the most common ones.

Kong Wenzheng in New York contributed to this story.