On the Jewish Street Patrol

The disheveled man looks momentarily confused. He's wearing a puffy red coat that looks as if it was salvaged from the city dump. "Are you guys cops?" he asks.

Hasidic groups patrol the streets of New York City, curbing crime but stirring up controversy.

(Getty/ABC News)

He's been set upon by four Hasidic Jews in the center aisle of House and Home Hardware on Flushing Avenue, a commercial strip that runs through the Hasidic section of Williamsburg in Brooklyn – a neighborhood uncanny for its resemblance to a 19th-century shtetl.

The man's presence is as misplaced as a Hell's Angel in Amish country. But it's not just the grimy clothes that make him unwelcome: His pants are inexplicably torn open, exposing his boxer shorts to the frightened Hasidic patrons he's been begging for money.

With bushy beards and black yarmulkes, the four Jews entreating the vagabond do so with an air of authority. Their intimidating posture, coupled with the two-way radios that hang from their belts, elicits the man's question again: "Are you guys cops?"

Related

A City's Eyes: Do Cameras Reduce Crime?

Money Sick? What Drives High-Risk Fraud?

NYPD Says 3 Fatally Shot in Manhattan Apartment

"Just get out of here," he's told, with an expletive thrown in to convey gravity. The man leaves and order is returned to the shop.

The four enforcers may not be members of the New York Police Department, but to the hardware store manager, if they're not exactly the law, they're certainly keepers of the peace. They're members of a volunteer civilian patrol called Shomrim (Hebrew for "watchers"), which, in addition to Williamsburg, has independently run chapters in Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Borough Park – all Brooklyn enclaves densely populated by religious Jews.

Some people see them as a model for helping curb urban crime, though others fault them for clashing with outside groups – and even among themselves.

Shomrim is not your typical neighborhood watch. For starters, the groups have a 24-hour hot line and dispatcher, their own marked vehicles, and a track record for dealing with everything from assault and battery to domestic violence.

"Everything that happens in the world happens here," says Yossi Pollack, a senior Shomrim member, as we drive through the streets of Williamsburg peering down alleyways. "Our telephone number is just like 911 – they call us for everything."