61 Hurt in Anti-Jewish Violence Linked to Traffic Death of Black Brooklyn Child : Race: Eight policemen hit by shotgun blast. Protesters burn cars in outrage over refusal to arrest Hasidic driver. Bottles thrown at mayor.

Violence erupted in Brooklyn’s racially troubled Crown Heights neighborhood Wednesday for the third straight day as blacks continued their protests against police handling of a car accident in which a black child was killed by a Hasidic Jewish driver.

Police said that 61 people, including 43 police officers, were injured. Eight of the policemen were struck by a shotgun blast fired from a roof. They were reported in good condition.

Late in the evening, Mayor David N. Dinkins visited the injured officers at a hospital.

“Under no circumstances am I going to tolerate lawlessness and violence,” said the mayor, who was the target of two bottles thrown by demonstrators when he visited the neighborhood earlier. The bottles glanced off the mayor’s car, causing security officers to cancel a walking tour the mayor had planned.

Scores of blacks hurled stones and bottles and burned several cars as Dinkins and Police Commissioner Lee P. Brown met Wednesday with elected officials and neighborhood youths to seek ways to end the confrontations.

“No justice, no peace,” the black protesters chanted as the meeting in a local school broke up.

Dinkins, using a bullhorn, sought to calm the crowd, but to no avail. About 2,000 policemen struggled to restore order against roving bands of protesters, some of whom at one point pulled the driver from a taxi and torched the cab.

“I am determined we are going to restore peace to the city,” Dinkins said.

Black demonstrators said that they are angry that the driver who killed the black child has not been arrested. They saw it as another sign of what they call the preferential treatment police give the Hasidic community in this predominantly African-American and black West Indian section of Brooklyn.

“If it had been a black driver who killed a Hasidic kid, the police would have busted him upside his head and had him in jail by now,” one black protester said.

A grand jury was investigating Monday night’s accident to determine whether to charge the driver, sect member Yoseph Lisef, 22, Brooklyn Dist. Atty. Charles J. Hynes said.

Earlier Wednesday, another crowd of blacks, some wielding baseball bats, marched on the world headquarters of the ultra-orthodox Hasidic Lubavitcher sect and threw stones and bottles at police and Jews protecting the building.

An Israeli flag was burned as the black demonstrators shouted anti-Semitic epithets.

The black protesters carried home-made cardboard signs with slogans such as “Hitler didn’t do his job” and “We want justice now! This is not Palestine or Soweto.”

Police officers in riot gear separated the blacks and Jews, but scores of blacks broke away and went on a rampage through a Jewish section of the neighborhood.

An elderly Hasidic rabbi, whom a Jewish store owner identified as a resident of the neighborhood, was attacked and beaten. Jews who claimed to be eyewitnesses said the rabbi had been set on by a band of about 10 to 15 black youths.

“This is unbelievable,” said Isaac Gurevitch, 25, a travel agent who has lived in the Crown Heights section for six years. “There is no word I can say to describe it. This is worse than animals.”

City Councilman Noach Dear, who was pelted with stones during the melee outside the Lubavitcher sect’s headquarters, said: “This is Nazi Germany all over again.”

The racial animosity in Crown Heights, which both black and white residents say has been festering all summer, has created another crucial challenge to Dinkins’ leadership of this racially divided city.

Dinkins, who in 1989 was elected as the city’s first black mayor, ran on a campaign that stressed unity and harmony among the city’s ethnically diverse population, which he refers to as a “gorgeous mosaic.”

The violence first flared Monday night after 7-year-old Gabin Cato was killed and his cousin, Angela Cato, also 7, was injured when a car went out of control at the intersection of Utica Avenue and President Street.

The car carried part of the entourage of the Lubavitcher sect’s spiritual leader, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. A police car was escorting the motorcade.

Later, in what authorities have described as a revenge slaying, a 29-year-old Australian Jew was fatally stabbed. He was identified as Yankel Rosenbaum, who friends said came to New York several weeks ago to do research on the Holocaust, which his father survived.

“(Rosenbaum), unfortunately, did not survive the streets of the city of New York,” said Rabbi Shmuel Butman, a spokesman for the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council.

Lemrick Nelson, 16, was charged with murdering Rosenbaum.

The violence Wednesday flared up only hours after a funeral service was held for Rosenbaum.

The continuing confrontations upset several black residents.

“I’m just embarrassed. This doesn’t make sense,” said Aasim Muhammed, 45, who was dressed in colorful African garb and carried an ornately carved walking stick. “People don’t want blood. They just want the man who killed that kid arrested. We don’t need this hate now.”