The Jersey City branch of the NAACP says Mayor Steve Fulop showed an “antipathy” toward the city’s black community during a recent forum to discuss the police shooting of two black men earlier this month.

Jersey City NAACP President Rev. Nathaniel Legay and Chris Gadsden, who chairs the organization’s political action committee, issued a statement Tuesday condemning what they said was a “dismissive tone and attitude” displayed by Fulop during the July 8 community meeting at St. John’s Baptist Church.

Jersey City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione declined to comment on the NAACP statement about Fulop.

The meeting with leaders of the city’s black community was held a week after the two men were wounded by police on Randolph Avenue in an area where fireworks were also being shot. The July 1 incident remains under investigation by the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, which investigates anytime an officer fires a service weapon in Hudson County.

During the forum, Gadsden requested that the city retract a July 2 statement that the officers appeared to follow Attorney General guidelines, despite the ongoing HCPO investigation.

“Mayor Fulop’s antipathy toward the Black community was evident when he responded to the first question of the evening," Legay and Gadsden wrote. “Mayor Fulop refused to disavow his administration’s premature statement even after Prosecutor Esther Suarez explained the protocol.”

Gadsden, who works as the principal at Lincoln High School, previously served on the Jersey City Council but was defeated by Fulop ally Mira Prinz-Arey in 2017.

“Mayor Steve Fulop understood a request for neutrality to be a request for political posturing ..." Legay and Gadsden said. “Withholding judgement is the right thing to do when fireworks are responded to with bullets.”