Detective Posed as Jewish Victim To Trick Hasids Into Sharing Surveillance Video of Beating
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Josh Nathan-Kazis August 31, 2016
Residents of the Hasidic neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, refused to help police investigating the 2013 gang beating of a black gay man by Orthodox Jews, an NYPD detective testified in open court August 30.
According to accounts of the trial published in the New York Post and the New York Daily News, a police detective told the judge that residents initially lied to him when he asked for surveillance video that might help crack the case.
Stymied, police then had a Jewish detective pose as a robbery victim and approach the residents on his own. “We were then able to get the videos,” Detective Eric Sanchez said, according to the Daily News.
The testimony came on the second day of the Brooklyn Supreme Court trial of Mayer Herscovic, a 24-year-old Hasidic man facing felony charges in connection with the December 2013 gang beating of Taj Patterson.
Patterson suffered facial fractures, retinal damage, and was left nearly blind in one eye after being attacked by a group of Orthodox Jewish men as he walked home through Williamsburg after 4 A.M.
Prosecutors described August 29 how Patterson banged on a passing car for help. The woman in the car called 911 but refused to let Patterson in, telling the 911 operator that there were “too many of them.”
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
