The members of a mob of hasidic men who allegedly savagely beat a 22-year-old African-American Brooklyn fashion student earlier this month were all wearing jackets or other clothing with police-style patches and appear to belong to a Shomrim haredi street patrol.
Taj Patterson
NYPD Stalls Making Arrests In Beating Of Young Gay Black Man By Haredi Street Partol
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The members of a mob of hasidic men who allegedly savagely beat a 22-year-old African-American Brooklyn fashion student earlier this month were all wearing jackets or other clothing with police-style patches, the Daily News reported.
Police believe the gang, which allegedly shouted anti-gay slurs Taj Patterson, are likely members of a haredi neighborhood patrol group like Shomrim.
But while NYPD Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the group appeared to wearing similar uniform jackets, he stopped short of saying those uniform jackets belong to Shomrim members.
“A group with some sort of uniform jacket with a logo may have been involved,” Kelly said, insisting that the NYPD hadn’t yet determined if the attackers were members of the Williamsburg Shomrim or another similar Jewish neighborhood street patrol.
Patterson says he was on his way home about 4:00 am December 1 when more than a dozen haredi men jumped him at Flushing Ave. near Spencer Street. The haredi gang punched and kicked Patterson and yelled anti-Gay slurs.
Patterson suffered a broken eye socket, a torn retina, blood clotting, and cuts and bruises to his knee and ankles.
The haredi mob then tried to run over witnesses who were taking pictures of the vehicles the haredim had arrived in.
Multiple witnesses reportedly told police that the haredim wore police-like shields and similar patches.
“The majority of them [were] wearing a jacket with three letters. I know the first letter is an ‘S.’ Under those three letters there was a word that started with an ‘S’,” MTA bus driver Evelyn Keys, a witness to the attack, said.
“They were wearing emblems. One was wearing a shield on his shirt. It was definitely a police force,” another witness said.
Police have made no arrests in the now 11-day old attack – despite having pictures of vehicle license plates of the vehicles driven by the haredi attackers, other photographic evidence and multiple eyewitness accounts of the attack that corroborate Patterson’s.
Related Post:
22-Year-Old Fashion Student Allegedly Beaten By Hasidic Mob.
[Hat Tip: APC.]