For the past two months, Mr. Eliezer Greer, Mr. Alfred Brooks and fellow volunteers in the Edgewood Park Defense Patrol – half of whom carry guns – have walked and biked through this neighborhood nightly to bring a sense of safety to an area they said had experienced an increase in crime and a decrease in police patrols.
“Keep patrolling,” pleaded Lakeisha Singleton, a lawyer who had pulled her car to the side of the road to greet Mr. Greer. Her 1-year-old son, Michael, sat in a car seat in back. “We need you here,” Ms. Singleton said. “We need all the help we can get.”
The police chief, Francisco Ortiz, applauded Mr. Greer and others in Edgewood for getting out on the street, saying their actions had spurred other areas to initiate neighborhood watches and bike patrols. And he said major criminal activity in the neighborhood had quieted since June.
Though Mayor John DeStefano Jr. has called the patrols a “recipe for disaster,” members of the group said that they had not once pulled out a gun, and the authorities acknowledged that violent crime had gone down in Edgewood since the patrols began.
[Extended Article on NY Times Website]
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13 Responses
Those Greers are an amazing family. We really need to see more of this “out of the box” type of thinking in the central frum Jewish communities of New York and New Jersey.
If you read the whole article you see that the efforts to improve the community have been ongoing for many years, and have included gentiles with the Jews in gaining the benefits of a better and safer neighborhood.
This should be a for community action everywhere. If the goyim won’t feel threatened by the frum community, but rather see everyone benefiting there would be a lot less friction and anti-Antisemitism.
why cant ny shomrim carry guns?
B”H it is nice to see when Yidden go out and make a difference. May Hashem guard them and give them the koack to keep things safe.
Every city needs Shomrim or a JDL chapter, to keep crime and anti-jew hatred at a low.
Saying good, esg78.
Minimizing crime needs a partnership for it to succeed.
It would be a good thing if it was done in a way to polarize the entire Jewish community. Angering an entire community, both Jewish and non-Jewish is not worth the miniscule reduction in crime that occured.
There wasn’t a lot of crime in that neighborhood before the shomrim, but now that they’re there, they’re the reason for less crime.
No one needs jdl hotheads. Shomrim is sufficient.
i’m guessing esg = eliezer sholom greer.
hmm…
joecool, you live in this neighborhood or just assuming?
1. is this the son of rabbi danny grier?
2. i remember years ago, when a jew was mugged on shabbos in crown heights, there was a discussion of permitting jews to carry “mug money” on shabbas. rav meir kahane, hy”d said — “why mug money, why not a 22!”
And you see where it got Kahane.
Ed, how many JDLers do you know? They are all hotheads? or did you mean heatedly passionate for Jewish choices.
“And you see where it got Kahane” – where? maybe into Gan Eden.
Both myself and my father have grown up in the neighborhood, just a few blocks from the Greers, and felt safer walking around before the shomrim were antagonizing people.
Now on a walk home on Friday night people are asking if you’re one of the Jews with the guns. Now it’s scary