Brooklyn Activist Charged With Arson in Torching of 10 Police Vehicles

New York|Brooklyn Activist Charged With Arson in Torching of 10 Police Vehicles

A pro-Palestinian activist who has clashed with police officers at demonstrations has been arrested and charged with arson after federal authorities said he sneaked onto a Brooklyn parking lot last month and set fire to 10 police vehicles.

The man, Jakhi McCray, 21, was arrested Monday morning and appeared before Magistrate Judge Vera M. Scanlon in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. He pleaded not guilty and was released on bail worth $300,000.

After he was granted bail, Mr. McCray was brought by police officers to Manhattan Criminal Court to be arraigned on state charges related to a protest he had attended, according to Ron Kuby, a lawyer for Mr. McCray. The details of that arrest were unclear to Mr. McCray’s lawyers late Monday. Mr. Kuby said he expected his client to spend a night in police custody before returning to his family’s home in Maplewood, N.J.

“It sounds like the police are just really angry at him for messing up their cars,” Mr. Kuby said.

Mr. McCray, who is also a staunch critic of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, was backed by his mother and more than two dozen supporters in the courtroom, most of whom donned kaffiyehs, a symbol of Palestinian resistance. Several dozen more gathered in an overflow room.

In a two-page statement released before his appearance, Mr. McCray railed against “the brutality of state repression” and the “kidnapping of migrants.” He claimed that police officers and media outlets had lied about him, and cited other people who had been arrested in connection with their presence at pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

In a news release, Joseph Nocella Jr., the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said: “Setting police vehicles ablaze is not a form of protest. It is a federal crime.”

Mr. McCray was arrested at a protest in Queens in May 2024 and at another demonstration in Manhattan in May of this year. He was charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct at each protest, according to court documents. Those cases are continuing. He was also arrested on a separate occasion last year after the police said he set fire to Israeli and American flags outside the Israeli consulate in New York.

Just before 1 a.m. on June 12, according to prosecutors, Mr. McCray scaled the fence of a private parking lot in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn where reserve police cars were parked.

Mr. McCray proceeded to light 10 cars on fire, including marked police cruisers and unmarked vehicles, along with a trailer, before fleeing through a hole in the fence. Surveillance footage then showed him inside a bodega about a 15-minute walk away, where he purchased a bottle of water, according to prosecutors. The authorities estimate that the fires caused more than $800,000 in damage.

Officers later recovered from the scene a pair of sunglasses with fingerprints that matched Mr. McCray’s, according to the authorities. They also found a cigar lighter, along with nearly two dozen fire starters on undamaged vehicles, according to court papers.

Prosecutors argued that Mr. McCray should be detained in part because the vehicles were burned shortly before the “No Kings” protests on June 14, affecting the police’s ability to secure the events.

Rebecca Urquiola, a federal prosecutor, said Mr. McCray was a flight risk, noting that he had not surrendered to the police until more than a month after the Police Department issued a news release on June 18 saying that he was wanted for arson.

Samuel I. Jacobson of the Federal Defenders of New York, another lawyer for Mr. McCray, said his client had promptly turned himself in once his lawyers had negotiated a date to surrender, which he said was common for white-collar defendants.

“He didn’t get cold feet,” Mr. Jacobson said before Judge Scanlon on Monday. “He didn’t try to reschedule.” After Mr. McCray was granted bail, prosecutors appealed the decision to release him. He then appeared before a district court judge, Rachel P. Kovner, who affirmed the decision.

After the court proceeding, an expletive directed at the police was found scrawled on a bench in Judge Kovner’s courtroom.