Up on Crime Heights

Crime is on the increase in Crown Heights, a neighborhood of Hasidim and blacks in Brooklyn. Rather than relying on the police to protect them, Jews are turning to their own tough volunteer unit ? the Shomrim

NEW YORK - When about half a dozen police cruisers blocked the corner of Kingston Avenue and Lefferts Street in the Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the street was already flooded with people. Gadi Hershkop, broad-shouldered, bearded and short-tempered, stood under a traffic light and took care of business. He placed several bearded young men in dark pants and blue T-shirts around two men, who looked a bit dazed. He barked orders and updates into a walkie-talkie and two cellular phones. When he was satisfied, he conversed with Shlomi Klein, a bearded red-head who stood beside him.

Twenty minutes earlier, the two men who were surrounded by the tough guys - Nossi Slater and his father - had returned from Saturday night services at the main synagogue of the Chabad movement. When the two Hasidim dressed in black suits, skullcaps and ritual fringes walked past the corner, a black youth called the elder Slater a “stinking Jew” and pushed him. When Nossi, 25, tried to intervene, the youngster punched him hard in the face.

The assailant vanished into the darkness but despite the proximity to their home and the knowledge that most of the buildings in the area are inhabited by Chabad Hasidim, the two men were alone. The Slaters were in need of help, but the thought of calling 911 - the police - did not even occur to them. Instead, they dialed a seven-digit number that the Lubavitcher Hasidim in Crown Heights know by heart or keep in the memories of their telephones. Within a few minutes three civilian cars arrived at the intersection. They were driven by Shomrim - an unarmed Jewish self-defense organization, which operates in the neighborhood where the heart of Lubavitcher Hasidism beats and where Jews live alongside blacks.

The Shomrim secured the dark corner, treated Nossi Slater's slight injuries and took statements from him and his father. Only then did they call the police. While the police were dealing with the incident, the Hasidim observed the men in blue, smoked cigarettes and kvetched about the recent rise in the crime rate in the neighborhood. According to police figures, in 2005, 18 people were murdered in Crown Heights, a significant increase over 2004. Earlier this year Chabad Hasid Ephraim (Fredrick) Klein was murdered. Despite a large monetary reward offered to anyone who comes forward with information that will lead to the murderer, no one has been arrested.

No wonder some people call the neighborhood Crime Heights.

Last line of defense

There are no figures that show that the approximately 15,000 Chabad Hasidim who live in the neighborhood are suffering more than their neighbors from the increasing crime, but the Jews don't need numbers. They feel threatened in an environment they describe as “anti-Semitic” and are convinced that they need the tough volunteer unit. Besides, they say the members of the community feel more comfortable calling the Shomrim than the police. As a unit that is based on volunteers, the Shomrim see themselves as the last line of defense for the Chabadniks in the neighborhood - against the outside world in general and against the blacks in particular.

“People [from the community] call us because they are more familiar with us. They know our faces. When we come to a scene we understand the people and the culture,” says Isaac Zellermaier, the unofficial leader of the Shomrim and the organization's liaison with the New York Police Department. Baruch Spielman, formerly head of the Jewish community council of the neighborhood who is also a member of the organization, agrees. “For a fire you'd call 911, but for the police you first call the guards and then 911,” he says. “First of all the police are goyim [gentiles]. Many times they tell the shvartze [black], who is the perpetrator, what to say so they shouldn't get arrested and then they tell him to press charges against the Jew.”

Prof. Samuel Heilman, a sociologist from Queens College in New York who specializes in Hasidic communities, says it is possible to understand why the Hasidim perceive themselves as being under constant threat. According to him, “The Jewish community in Crown Heights is tiny. Even in some of the streets where they live they are a minority, and that's why they feel unprotected when they compare themselves to other Hasidic communities in Williamsburg or Flatbush or Boro Park.”

The Jewish community's need for the Shomrim is clear to the leaders of the Lubavitcher community. They remember painfully the “pogrom” they experienced during four long days of the summer of 1991. According to them, in the events that eventually became known as “the Crown Heights riots” the police abandoned the Jewish community to the mercies of the black rioters who rampaged in the neighborhood, looting, beating and murdering.

NYPD ambivalence

However, not everyone views the existence of the Jewish civil guard with enthusiasm. The NYPD relates to the Shomrim with ambivalence. On the one hand, this is not the only civil organization in New York that acts to reduce crime and deter criminals. On the other hand, the police do not like it when other bodies gnaw at its status as the holder of the monopoly on the use of force in society. According to neighborhood police officer Vincent Martinoz, who is responsible for liaison with the organization, “They are not allowed by law or not even sanctioned by us to stop anybody on the street. They can only be observers, to watch what's going on and not to put their hand on anybody.”

The non-Jewish residents of Crown Heights also have reservations about the organization's activity. It is not hard to understand them. When a group of tough guys relates to the neighborhood like sheriffs relate to their county and when these tough guys allow themselves to capture, detain and sometimes beat suspects, nearly all of whom are black, from time to time voices are heard accusing the Shomrim of racism. A number of violent incidents in recent years have only reinforced this impression among black residents and leaders in New York.

At the corner of Kingston and Lefferts, Gadi Hershkop, the 31-year-old driver of a girls' school bus and the coordinator of the Shomrim, forecasts a hot summer. “When the weather gets warm, the problems begin. It's like that every year but now it's worse. Crime is on the rise and it's getting tense here with these shvartze animals. It's like a war zone out here.”

Before he finished enumerating his complaints, another call came in from Shomrim headquarters. A group of men was sent to the corner of Empire Street and Brooklyn Avenue to help a Jewish couple in a car. The couple said black youths had thrown a large stone at the windshield of their car and fled. Thank God the glass did not break, they added, pointing to the scratch caused by the rock. Hershkop and Klein said the two incidents reinforce the impression the neighborhood has been making on them for many years now. Each intersection they passed stirred up memories. “Right over there, on the corner of Schenectady and Carroll, a young Jewish boy was recently mugged of his cell phone and beaten up by a shvartze so badly he had to be hospitalized,” says Hershkop. “On East New York, between Kingston and Brooklyn, a woman had her wallet snatched; at Union and Brooklyn, shvartze girls assaulted a young Jewish girl, stole her cellphone and had her earring removed out of her ear.”

Be a mensch

Pensive and nostalgic, Hershkop and Klein, a fruit merchant of 28, continued to pursue suspicious activity. Both of them joined the Shomrim when they were teenagers. Hershkop did so during the 1991 riots. “I remember the shvartzes were coming from all directions. They burned a van right outside of the synagogue. They overturned cars. They chased and beat Jews. The mayor didn't care and the police couldn't do anything. It was important that we would be out on the street, showing people that there's somebody they can count on.”

According to Hershkop, a person who wants to join the Shomrim must live in the neighborhood, have a job and not have a criminal record. The members of the organization refuse to say how many people belong, but at least two teams of them patrol the Jewish part of the neighborhood every night. They look for burglars, perverts and anyone who could harm a Jew from the community. “You don't have to be a big tough guy to join us,” the big man laughed. “Above all you have to be a mensch [human being].”

The Jews of Crown Heights felt the need to establish their own defense group in the early 1960s. At that time black immigrants began coming into the neighborhood from the West Indies, and racial tensions were rising. Following the rape and murder of a Jewish girl by a black man in 1961, Rabbi Samuel Schrage decided to establish the Maccabees - the first Jewish patrol group in the neighborhood. Since then, Jews have been controlling the Jewish section of Crown Heights.

In 1973 the Maccabees joined the Va'ad Hakahal (Jewish Community Committee) as its operative branch and changed their name to Shmira. The organization grew up alongside the community and adapted itself to the community's needs. Its people were called in to deal with cases of domestic violence and quarrels between neighbors and to look for children and old people who were lost. In the 1970s other Hasidic communities in New York in neighborhoods like Boro Park, Williamsburg and Flatbush, did the same.

The organization increased its influence in the community but in 1996 a chain of events began that led to a split and a huge dispute. In that year two members of the organization chased a black boy whom they suspected of having stolen a bicycle. They grappled with his uncle, Kenneth Hartley, who tried to defend him. When the police were called in to stop the fight among the three, they found Hartley with his head bleeding. The two Hasids were arrested and charged with beating Hartley. The incident became a racial and political issue. The mayor at the time, Rudolph Giuliani, declared that the police would henceforth “closely” supervise Shmira activity. The provocative black reverend Al Sharpton questioned the Hasids' quick release from custody, saying it had raised questions of preferential treatment.

Open hostility

The media blitz affected relations within the community. Shmira accused the Jewish Community Committee of not backing up the group, and broke away. The group changed its name to Shomrim, to be affiliated with the similar Hasidic patrol groups operating in New York. A year later, following an internal dispute, some of the members of the Shomrim resigned, joined up with the Jewish community council and re-established Shmira. Today, both organizations are operating in the neighborhood and there is open hostility between them.

According to Spielman, who headed the Jewish community council during the period of the double split, “These people [Shomrim] have been the source of heartache ever since. As recently as two months ago they saw a member of Shmira being beaten up by shvartzes and watched and didn't even come to help him.” Hershkop of Shomrim immediately gets mad when the rival group is mentioned. “When I see them in the street I don't say hello. They teach people how to hate. We are not that kind of people. I don't even want to talk about them. You know what? Screw them!” In the meantime, the quarrel is delaying an initiative by black leaders to break up the Jewish organizations and establish a mixed black and Jewish community patrol that could moderate the interracial tensions.

Both the Shomrim and the Shmira have histories of applying excessive force to suspects. In August 2005, after members of Shmira beat up a burglar, a rumor spread in Crown Heights that Jews had killed a black man and the neighborhood was on the verge of explosion. But the police recognized the violent potential in the situation and called in black activist Richard Green, who calmed things down.

Green, who runs a black youth center in the neighborhood, has said the Jewish organizations should be more “mature.” He mentioned his initiative to allow anyone in the neighborhood who so desires to join the Jewish organizations. According to him, “If you had a strong civilian watch, I'm quite sure you would find members of the black community that would be interested to be a part of it.”

The Jews are not enthusiastic about the idea. Isaac Zellermaier thinks the initiative does not even merit consideration. “This is a Jewish organization,” he said. According to Spielman, the initiative to establish a joint patrol is an absurd idea: “Can Golani [an elite Israeli army infantry division] and Fatah [a branch of the PLO] patrol together?” For Shlomi Klein, the red-headed member of Shomrim, who kept an ever watchful eye on his community's territory, the question isn't if Jews and blacks can get along. For him, being part of a powerful group which consists of Jews - and Jews alone - is part of a larger issue. “I originally joined Shomrim because I felt people need to take a stance,” he says. “My grandfather was a [Holocaust] survivor, and I feel that in our little world every man's action makes a difference. I'm here because I just don't want the Holocaust to ever happen again.”