he NYPD is trying to settle a long-running dispute between two rival Orthodox Jewish patrol groups – and keep them from taking the law into their own hands – by uniting them into one police-supervised unit, The Post has learned.
The challenge is getting them to cooperate.
Shmira and Shomrim, private crime-patrol organizations in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, have been rivals since the late ’90s, when they split.
Shmira has agreed to the merger, which was proposed in June. Shomrim has refused.
The plan would create a united, NYPD-trained patrol group the department would supervise and partially fund, a source said.
Shomrim spokesman Binyamin Lifshits says the group is concerned that the NYPD would monitor all emergency calls – including private matters like domestic disputes, which the Orthodox community wants to settle on its own.
But Shomrim’s larger objection is with Shmira, which Shomrim has accused of trying to sabotage its operations by slashing patrol-car tires, making prank emergency calls and falsely informing on Shomrim to the police.
“We don’t sit down with Shmira,” Lifshits said of his rivals, which split from Shomrim in 1999 after certain members were thrown out for alleged past criminal activity.
“The police are trying to twist our arms to work with them. This we cannot accept.”
But Yossi Stern, 38, the director of Shmira, laughs at claims made against his group.
“It’s all a bunch of rhetoric. Show me a police report,” he said. “We’re not out to harass anybody. We’re out to do a service for the community.”
The NYPD has long been frustrated with both patrols. It came to a head this year on April 14 when a member of Shmira attacked the black college-student son of a police officer.
Additional reporting by Murray Weiss