(VOA) On March 14, New York City Muslims were putting their families to bed when details emerged of a mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, about 15,000 kilometers away. A white supremacist had targeted Friday prayer. Fifty were dead, including refugees, women and children; one as young as three.
Brooklyn residents Mohammad Khan and Nazrul Islam were returning from a leadership dinner when they heard.
“We stopped our car, we parked, and we were just in tears,” Khan said. “Me and the imam — we were just devastated.”
For months, Khan and Islam, an imam and a Quranic school principal, had been working on the rollout of an all volunteer-led civilian patrol organization, Muslim Community Patrol & Services (MCPS). “MCPS is aimed at protecting members of the local community from escalating quality-of-life nuisance crimes,” its website says.
