Detective Posed as Jewish Victim To Trick Hasids Into Sharing Surveillance Video of Beating
Taj Patterson after his beating.
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.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Dive In
-
Fast Forward As Netanyahu arrives in Budapest, Hungary announces exit from International Criminal Court
-
Fast Forward Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ includes 17% tariffs on Israeli imports, even as Israel cancels tariffs on US goods
-
Fast Forward Hillel CEO says he shares ‘concerns’ over campus deportations, calls for due process
-
Fast Forward Jewish Princeton student accused of assault at protest last year is found not guilty
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 4
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture In a time of tariffs and uncertainty, this is the Jewish word we need to soothe our minds and souls
-
Opinion As Zionist Jews, we must condemn Trump’s campaign to deport students
-
Opinion Trump is cracking down on universities — just like Hitler targeted academics who didn’t bow to his will
-
Fast Forward As Netanyahu arrives in Budapest, Hungary announces exit from International Criminal Court
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.