Report: Cop says he broke up Jersey City Muslim celebrations on 9/11

A report by New Jersey Advance Media Monday cites a retired Jersey City police captain saying he saw a rooftop celebrations of dozens of people following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The report also quotes residents in the area of Journal Square saying they saw small pockets of people celebrating before the groups were dispersed by authorities.

According to the report, those accounts are the products of dozens of interviews seeking to explore Donald Trump's widely debunked assertion he saw television footage of thousands of Muslims celebrating in Jersey City following the attacks.

Despite exhaustive searches by several media organizations and weeks of controversy, no such footage has emerged. There were, however, several media reports in the days after Sept. 11 describing police responding to unconfirmed reports of celebrations — but until Monday, no accounts from law enforcement saying those were ever corroborated.

Reports of celebrations have been widely denied by authorities. In a series of Tweets after Trump made his claim, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop called the statement “absurd,” and has denied the claim several times since. Gov. Chris Christie has said flatly (after first only saying he didn't personally remember any celebrations) that the celebrations didn't happen.

“We checked that out instantly,” then-attorney general John Farmer recalled in an interview several weeks ago. “If it had been going on — especially in the thousands — we would have locked that place down. Because it would have been a serious threat to public safety.”

But in Monday's report, NJ Advance Media quotes retired police Capt. Peter Gallagher saying he cleared a rooftop celebration of 20 to 30 people at 6 Tonnele Ave. The report also notes a 2001 report from the Star-Ledger saying FBI agents took several residents of the building into custody, though it is unclear why they were detained and what happened afterward to them.

The NJ Advance Media report also two residents who say they saw a crowd of about 15 to 20 people rejoicing on John F. Kennedy Boulevard the morning of Sept. 11. A retired officer reportedly said several people called to describe a crowd on the roof of 2801 John F. Kennedy Blvd., but another retired officer told the news organization that by the time he good to the roof, no one was there.

A TV report by CBS 2 News at the time describes statements by an unnamed investigator about similar allegations, though no follow-up report ever showed them to be confirmed.

Trump’s specific claims — of thousands of people celebrating, and of such celebrations being shown on TV — have been roundly disproven. PolitiFact and the The Washington Post couldn’t find any sign such footage exists, even after searches of television transcripts from the time. No footage has surfaced on social media, in mainstream news, on political blogs or in alternative media. No network has pointed to any archive of its own saying such footage exists.

When pressed for proof, Trump has pointed to reports that don't support those specific claims — but instead described unverified accounts of much smaller celebrations.

After he tweeted links to a Sept. 18, 2001 Washington Post report that said some people were detained and questioned after they were “allegedly” seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops,” the reporter responsible for the story said he didn't remember anything of the scale Trump described. Trump soon after drew ire for appearing to mock the reporter's physical disability in response.

In 2011, however, there was broadly televised footage of celebrations in the Palestinian territories, as seen below:

Still, accounts of smaller celebrations have persisted, even as they've been denied by several political and law enforcement leaders. Hundreds of people have taken to New Jersey 101.5's Facebook page to say they remember celebrations — though of those hundreds, only a small fraction described seeing them personally. Many others described seeing reports on television, or being told about celebrations by people they trust.

Several people have called into New Jersey 101.5 talk shows to say the same.

Some of the accounts describe celebrations not in Jersey City, but in Paterson — though Paterson's top law enforcement officer says police don't have any records of celebrations, and vehemently denies they occurred.

Among the accounts described by New Jersey 101.5 audience members via Facebook:

• Priscilla Crane Hudson: “I saw first hand in Jersey City the Muslims cheering in the streets when the World Trade Center was destroyed. These so called news outlets should get their facts straight. And there were 100s of revelers over 3,000+ deaths.”
• Tom Penicaro: “I worked for PSEG in Clifton on the Paterson boarder and I witnessed it firsthand. They were celebrating in the streets cheering and stomping on the flag. I am a Marine and I remember very very clearly because I was so passed I wanted to engage them with a bat I had in my van.”
• P.j. Flattery: “I saw with my own eyes Muslims in Paterson dancing and singing on the streets during 9/11. Trumps an American. He’s gonna have his haters and people trying to knock him down.”
• Patrick Kiernan: “They were celebrating all around the area of the mosque on Getty Ave in Paterson. You cant tell me they weren’t because I lived there when It happened and I observed the clashes in the city at the time. There may be no visual proof but I remember the police went on the news and asked the citizens not to retaliate against any of the Muslim citizens in the city and that just emboldened them even more to be spiteful and full of their hate. Don't say it didn’t happen because it did.”

Last month, MTV News aired a report revisiting its own news story from shortly after 9/11. In the original 2001 report, Paterson resident Emily Acevedo said she saw “a lot of people, and they were just chanting and raving, and I noticed they were holding things. They were holding, like, rocks and sticks. And they were saying, ‘Burn America.'”

She went on in the 2001 report to say the group had been of teenagers. She said some of the teens were on Main Street, banging sticks and stones against railings and leaving chip marks.

“Everyone that was out there, they were only 13, maybe 14 at the most. They were kids. They didn’t know what they were doing. But they had so much hate, and they were doing that. It was just so sad,” Acevedo said.

In a new interview with MTV, Acevedo said it was “just a bunch of kids acting out — they don’t know any better.”