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Gangs of New York

Don't put a fork in 'em yet.
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Meanwhile, it has been brought to my attention that the best way to build an audience isn’t to write detailed ruminations on issues of the day, but to re-post stuff that other people report that you think your readers will want to read about.

Therefore:

A Borough Park businessman at the heart of a police bribery probe leaned on his police buddies to squash two assault raps involving his nephew, according to the victims of a pair of attacks.

Borough Park business honcho Jeremy Reichberg is being investigated by the feds for allegedly plying NYPD brass and at least one officer in the 66th Precinct with gifts in return for favors, according to multiple sources.

His nephew, Shlomo Reichberg, was part of a gang of disassociated Hasidic teens called Grouplech, which means forks in Yiddish, community sources said. The Hasidic hooligans were involved in two reported violent attacks in 2012, according to the victims.

In one scary encounter, Micha Kaplan, 45, says a group of Hasidic teens put him in the hospital for several days after a severe beating. The alleged beatdown started after the teens cut him off as he was driving in Borough Park.

At a red light, Kaplan rolled down his window and complained to the driver of the Chevy Impala.

That didn’t go over well.

Kaplan says the teens tailgated him for 20 blocks. The confrontation came to a head when one of the teens got out the car and tried to open Kaplan’s passenger side door. When Kaplan got out to close the door two of the teens started to punch and kick him, police records show.

During the attack they allegedly yelled “Litvak!” the Yiddish term for Lithuanian Jews, who are not Hasidic.

Kaplan, who works in real estate, went to Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. He spent four days there with internal bleeding.

After his release, he did some research in the community, and identified several of the teens he believes attacked him. They included Reichberg’s nephew, who was with the group at the time, but did not hit Kaplan.

But police from the 66th Precinct didn’t care, Kaplan says.

“They were squashing it 100%,” Kaplan said. “They told me I was unable to identify the guy and that my witnesses were no good. They never tried to make an arrest.”

Kaplan filed a complaint with the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

Afterwards, the officers issued a wanted poster for one of the alleged attackers, Yossi Follman. But cops made no effort to find him and warned Kaplan to stay away, the victim contends.

“They told me not to hang out in front of (Follman’s) house and suggested I call 911 when I see him on the street so they could send a patrol car to arrest him,” Kaplan said. “It was a joke.”

No arrest has ever been made. . . .

On Wednesday, Follman’s mother downplayed the incident.

“How is this something new?” she asked a reporter outside her Borough Park home.

“Are you sure Mr. Kaplan isn’t exaggerating things,” she asked.

Asked about the gang, she said, “They are just a group of friends. Never into anything violent.”

That’s not how Benjamin Blau (no relation to this reporter) sees it.

Blau says he was attacked by members of the gang as he was delivering religious court notifications in Borough Park in October 2012.

According to Blau, several of the teens inside four cars jumped out and yelled in Yiddish “Kill him!”

“Between eight to 10 guys approached our car,” Blau recalled several weeks after the assault. One kicked the driver’s side door and flashed a knife.

In a panic, Blau accidentally unlocked the door. The gang members then yanked him from the car and one began hitting him in the head with a metal bar, Blau says.

“At this point I started losing consciousness,” he recalled.

Police arrested three of the assailants but the case was later dropped, records show. It is unclear why the charges were never pursued.

Consider this a dispatch from the world of the Kiryas Joel Option. And no, I’m not suggesting that Hasidic communities have a bigger problem with street gangs than non-Hasidic communities – that would be ridiculous. I’m saying: insular communities that stand by their own against secular authorities on matters where they are resisting the larger culture may well also stand by their own against secular authorities on matters of clear-cut criminality, and it’s worth being cognizant of that likelihood.

Meanwhile: anyone know why a gang of Hasidic street thugs might call themselves “forks?”

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