NEW YORK
Forward
Josh Nathan-KazisApril 20, 2016
In Boro Park, Brooklyn, there are two police forces.
One drives cars with flashing lights, is dispatched over walkie-talkies, and has a blue-and-black shield for a logo.
The other is the New York City Police Department.
The Shomrim security patrol, as the local civilian force is known, is in part a pastime for traditionally observant Jewish men who like dressing up as cops, and in part a dead-serious police force that’s accrued immense power in this insular, Yiddish-speaking Brooklyn neighborhood.
The group’s 100-plus members rush through Boro Park streets in black SUV’s and police-style cruisers, responding to emergencies reported to their private emergency hotline. In one 2010 incident, they beat a man bloody before cops arrived. When the police do show up, Shomrim snap pictures as police arrest the suspects the Shomrim have, at times, already detained.
Now, a sprawling FBI investigation into corrupt relationships between Orthodox activists and the NYPD is drawing new attention to longstanding concerns about the group’s influence in the neighborhood, and its unusually close ties to the NYPD’s 66th Precinct in Boro Park.
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