Brooklyn's Vigilante Jewish Patrolmen Get Zero Jail Time for Beating Gay Black Man

SOUTH WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — Two members of a local Orthodox Jewish group that volunteers to patrol the neighborhood will serve no time in prison for brutally beating a young, gay black man as he walked down Flushing Avenue in the heavily Orthodox part of South Williamsburg.

Pinchas Braver, 22, and Abraham Winkler, 42, were instead sentenced this week — as part of a reported "guilty" plea deal — to three years of probation and 150 hours of community service (each).

They must also pay their victim — Taj Patterson, now 25 — $1,400 in restitution costs.

Patterson was walking down Flushing Avenue around 5 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2013 when he was attacked by a gang of traditionally dressed Jewish men, including Braver and Winkler, who beat him to a pulp while shouting homophobic slurs, according to news reports at the time.

Patterson's eye socket was reportedly broken and his retina torn during the attack — leaving him blind in one eye.

The New York Post reported that during court deliberations, his convicted attackers have resisted searching outside their insular Hasidic circle for a spot to serve the 150 community-service hours. From the Post:

Braver and Winkler tried to dodge the plea condition that their community service hours be served in a "culturally diverse neighborhood," outside of their own Hasidic community. Instead, the duo asked to log hours at Chai Lifeline, an organization for sick Jewish children."

The sentencing was adjourned in order to allow prosecutors to investigate Chai, but prosecutors said Tuesday the defendants needed to choose another organization that fit the guidelines of the plea.

Braver and Winkler, pictured below, are scheduled to be back in court Oct. 18, at which time their community-service assignment will be finalized.

This isn't the first time members of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood patrol, also known as the Shomrim, have been accused of discrimination by non-Jewish Brooklynites living near Orthodox neighborhoods.

A recent Daily Beast investigation into these vigilante Hasidic groups profiled David Flores, a Sunset Park resident who was, like Patterson, beaten bloody while traveling through the Borough Park neighborhood, another Hasidic stronghold in South Brooklyn. Because Flores fought back by firing his gun, he's now spending 12 years in upstate prison.

Patterson, for his part, is now suing the city and the NYPD for giving his attackers “favorable and preferential treatment" after he was beaten.

The NYPD investigation into Patterson's case was reportedly botched from the start. According to the New York Daily News, records show NYPD officers with the 90th Precinct, covering South Williamsburg, closed a probe into the bloody beating within 24 hours — even scrawling across the case file, “final, no arrests, CLOSED.”

Earlier this year, the U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, Preet Bharara, accused various NYPD officers, including the former head of the NYPD precinct in Sunset Park (which neighbors Borough Park), of essentially letting the nearby Orthodox Jewish community police itself, in return for lavish vacations and prostitutes on airplanes and the like.

Patterson's lawyer, Andrew Stoll, sees a connection there.

“The Patterson case demonstrates a disturbing disparity in access to justice between Taj Patterson’s community and the Orthodox community, which flows directly from the NYPD’s high-ranking collusion with the vigilante Shomrim patrols,” Stoll said in a recent interview.