A Hoboken virtual meeting on the Neumann Leathers redevelopment project in the 1st Ward didn’t last long last night after someone Zoom bombed the meeting with a porn video and scribbling taunts on the meeting screen.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
“The administration and I were incredibly excited to share the updated plans for Neumann Leathers and had all stakeholders assembled for a productive meeting. One condo association president on a work assignment in Tel Aviv waited up until 1 a.m. so that he could participate,” 1st Ward Councilman Mike DeFusco told HCV.
” … What transpired was simultaneously homophobic and racist, traumatizing all in attendance. To the punk responsible, let me tell you something: in Hoboken politics we don’t hide behind Zoom to attack someone, we do it face to face. You’re pathetic.”
DeFusco also indicated the Zoom meeting was not scheduled as a webinar, which allowed participant interference to become possible.
The meeting was less than 10 minutes in when Community Development Director Christopher Brown was giving a recap of the redevelopment plan that was approved by the council in 2015, with the “bomber” writing “No one cares lol” on the presentation.
“Great, are we getting Zoombombed?” Brown said at the time, acknowledging what was happening.
The presentation was briefly halted after the virtual slides were scribbled on and then things degenerated to the point where a pornographic video was briefly played.
“Oh that’s not good. Oh that’s not good. Oh come on,” Brown said in disbelief.
While the perpetrator’s video was disabled, he continued to scribble on the presentation slides and several speakers writing captions that they were “losers,” with one in particular stating “LOSERS HAHAHAHA I WIN LOSERS LOLLL.”
Eventually, Brown apologized but said that this incident needed to be reported to the authorities and therefore rescheduled for another day.
City spokeswoman Marilyn Baer said that police are investigating the incident and the meeting will be rescheduled for January, declining to comment further.
Public Safety Director Kenneth Ferrante added that while he had no additional information on the incident at this time, he stated that from prior experience, it will take weeks to receive information from Zoom – if they receive anything at all.