Brooklyn safety official charged with raping 16-year-old girl
Yanky Daskal
was charged with rape and criminal sex act, plus three misdemeanors —
forcible touching, sex abuse and acting in a manner injurious to a
child
An
official with an influential neighborhood watch group in Brooklyn has
been charged with raping a 16-year-old girl, police said Thursday.
Jacob
Daskal, 59, who runs the Shomrim's Brooklyn South Safety Patrol, a
Hasidic neighborhood watch group, abused the girl between August and
November of last year, police said.
Daskal
was charged with rape and criminal sex act, plus three misdemeanors —
forcible touching, sex abuse and acting in a manner injurious to a
child.
Shomrim's
links to law enforcement have been a subplot in the ongoing federal
probe involving two businessmen and a number of NYPD supervisors. In
2016, the FBI investigated what role the supervisors may have played in
securing gun licenses for members of Shomrim. Daskal, who lives in Borough Park and has strong ties to the NYPD, was not charged in that case.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/brooklyn-safety-official-charged-raping-16-year-old-girl-article-1.3982706
Brooklyn Safety Patrol Leader Is Charged in Sex Abuse of Teen
By Al Baker
On
Wednesday, sex crimes investigators for the New York Police Department
received a troubling report: The influential leader of a Brooklyn safety
patrol known as the shomrim had been sexually abusing a teenage girl,
the police were told.
A day later,
detectives arrested the man, Jacob Daskal, a leader of one faction of
what has been, since the 1970s, a sort of auxiliary police force for the
ultra-Orthodox Jews of Brooklyn’s Borough Park, Crown Heights, Flatbush
and Williamsburg neighborhoods.
Mr.
Daskal, 59, was charged with statutory rape, sexual abuse and other
crimes. The authorities believe the abuse took place at Mr. Daskal’s
home between August and November of last year, when the girl, who is now
16, was a year younger. But the inquiry is continuing, to determine if
the alleged abuse occurred over a longer period of time or if there were
additional victims.
The revelations cast another shadow
over a group that has long cultivated relationships with New York’s law
enforcement and elected leaders — and that has secured government
funding for vehicles, phones and other equipment integral to its brand
of security for some of the city’s most insular populations. On several
occasions, critics have questioned whether the shomrim’s proximity to
authority has fostered vigilantism or corruption.
In
May 2016, two men linked to the shomrim of Williamsburg admitted to
taking part in the assault of a black man in their neighborhood. A month
earlier, Alex Lichtenstein, a former member of Mr. Daskal’s Brooklyn
South Safety Patrol, which covers Borough Park, was arrested on federal
charges of trying to secure handgun permits by offering the police
thousands of dollars in cash bribes.
In
the case of Mr. Daskal, 59, he was arrested at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday,
within the 77th police precinct, the police said. He was then taken to
the Brooklyn Special Victims squad, they said.
On
Friday, the police said that Mr. Daskal had been charged with
third-degree rape; third-degree criminal sex act; forcible touching;
acting in a manner injurious to a child less than 17; and third-degree
sexual abuse. He shuffled, handcuffed, into court for arraignment and
pleaded not guilty before Judge Deborah Dowling, who issued an order of
protection on behalf of his accuser.
Evan
Lipton, a lawyer for Mr. Daskal, said his client was prepared to
surrender his passport.
Afterward, as Mr. Daskal was released on bail,
some supporters surrounded him in a hallway as Mr. Lipton told him,
“Your phones have been seized.”
It was not immediately clear what triggered Wednesday’s report to the police.
Around Borough Park, people seemed dazed by the news of the arrest.
“This
is the last thing anybody would believe,” said one man, a neighbor, who
stood outside Mr. Daskal’s house about noon, watching as a van from the
Crime Scene Unit pulled to the curb. Throughout the morning,
investigators, some wearing latex gloves, converged on the brick duplex
set back from 46th Street as onlookers, including several children,
gathered outside.
On those same
streets, the shomrim are seen as quick-acting stand-ins for police
officers. With their two-way radios and social media links, they have
won praise for keeping a watchful eye on the community, chasing down
burglars, controlling crowds and locating the missing.
Residents,
many of whom are Yiddish-speaking and cling to a culture rooted in
preindustrial Europe, trust the shomrim as liaisons to secular
authorities, who can negotiate language barriers and complex social
mores.
According to state campaign finance records, Mr. Daskal has been a consistent political contributor over the years.
Police
officials, too, have embraced the shomrim. It is commonplace for
shomrim leaders to attend promotion ceremonies at Police Headquarters in
Lower Manhattan.
In 2015, a year
before he became police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, then the chief
of department, threw out the first pitch at an annual softball game
between officers from the 66th Precinct and members of the Borough Park
shomrim. Mr. Lichtenstein played in that game, the Greenfield Classic,
named for David G. Greenfield, a city councilman who represents the
district. In an interview in 2016, however, Mr. Daskal denied that Mr.
Lichtenstein’s criminal case involving the gun permits had anything to
do with the shomrim.
On Friday, as
investigators streamed in and out of Mr. Daskal’s house, signs of their
connections were evident. Parked in the street, near Mr. Daskal’s
driveway, were a pair of shomrim vehicles outfitted like police patrol
cars: emergency lights; a shield logo; the words “Courtesy
Professionalism Respect” written on the side.
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